Library of Congress. 



UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



Shelf ._Ly_4--_. 



EIHICAL 
MARRIAGE 










A DISCUSSION OF 
THE RELATIONS 
OF SEX FROM 
THE STANDPOINT 
OF SOCIAL DUTY 

BY 
DELOS F. WILCOX, PH. D. 


,. 


f 






WOOD- ALLEN PUBLISHING CO., 
Ann Arbor, Mich. 



'A 



24210 






XJ :>ij**-«* kr 



Lact_23 lado 

Copyright, 19CX), by Dei^os F. Wii^cox. 



Entered at Stationer's Hall, I^ondon, Eng. 



This book is dedicated to the youths and 
maidens who do what they think they ought to 
do, admitting no ideal that is impracticable, and 
omitting no duty that is seen. 



PREFACE. 



THIS little book embodies a protest against 
the idea that the morals of marriage are 
a subject to be discussed by physicians alone, and 
as incidental to sexual pathology. *' Doctor 
books ' ' are kept in many households on a high 
and forbidden shelf. A good book on the phys- 
iology and ethics of the sex-life ought not to be 
out of place on the center-table or the mantel. 
But this book aims to be more than a protest. 
Its purpose is constructive — to point the way 
positively as well as negatively along which peo- 
ple may go to a life of greater happiness, keener 
intelligence, and truer responsibility. I have 
endeavored to keep free from purely visionary 
theories, and to limit myself in all essential points 
to what is strictly practicable. In questions of 
the morals of sex, as in all other ethical ques- 
tions, we should steer clear of the Scylla of the 
dreamer and the Charybdis of the man of the 
world. The former would impose upon us im- 
practicable ideals; the latter would persuade us 
that ideals are impracticable. Du^y can always 
be done, — not always easily, but always more 
easily when we set about it than when we leave 
it to set about us. This book, then, by throw- 
ing the relations of marriage open to discussion, 
attempts, as it were, to redeem a wide field of 

5 



6 PREFACE, 

human conduct to the domain of ethical princi- 
ples. Furthermore, in accordance with the spirit 
of the best thought of the time the ethical ideals 
urged here receive their highest sanction from 
the facts of social relations and social duties. 
There is much need that the youth of the world 
should recognize the social importance of sex- 
love and the structure and functions of the 
family. 

I am deeply indebted to the associations, an- 
tagonisms, and friendships of a body of earnest 
college men and women with whom for the first 
time in my experience discussion became free. 
There are many who have helped me directly 
and indirectly toward the realization of the 
thought of this book, — especially a brother who 
has from my youth urged me to ideal aims, a 
home-mate whose confidence and sympathy have 
made self-control and freedom of friendship easy, 
and a little daughter whose strong body and 
sturdy heart make me more than ever confident 
of the blessings regenerated marriage has in 
store for the children. I am under obligations 
to numerous friends for suggestions in regard to 
the manuscript, and particularly to Miss Flor- 
ence S. Webb for careful corrections and for 
help in the preparation of the notes. 

DKI.OS F. W11.COX. 

Elk Rapids, Mich,, May, igoo. 



CONTENTS 



Chap. Page. 

Introduction 9 

I. THE SUPREME CO-OPERATION. 

Reproduction a Sociai, Function. 
Thk Fittest Shoui<d Marry 
Hindrances TO Marriage 
The Fit and the Unfit 

II. PREPARATION FOR MARRIAGE. 



I 


15 


II 


24 


III 


30 


IV 


38 



V 


49 


VI 


55 


VII 


58 


VIII 


68 



Current iDEAi^s. 
Motives for Marriage . 
Love and Friendship 
Duties of Courtship 



III. THE CONTROL OF PASSION IN 
MARRIAGE. 

A Program OF Procreation . . . 

Al^TERNATlVES TO CONTINENCE 

Objections to Continence in Marriage . 
Practicabii^ity of Continence in Mar- 
riage XII 121 

Marriage FOR Companionship. XIII 127 

7 



IX 


81 


X 


87 


XI 


103 



8 CONTENTS, 

IV. THE LINKS OF LIFE. 
Fatherhood . . . . . XIV 133 

Motherhood XV 137 

CHII.DH00D. XVI 142 

Friendship XVII 152 

V. SOCIAL COROLLARIES. 

The FAMI1.Y XVIII 161 

The Neighborhood .... XIX 166 

The City XX 170 

The State XXI 177 

Humanity XXII 182 

Notes . 187 

List oe Authors . . . . . 232 



ETHICAL MARRIAGE. 



INTRODUCTION. 

THE intensity of the passion that unites the 
sexes seems to have rendered men almost 
universally unable to take a rational view of sex 
relations. The revolt against sensuality has at 
times filled the world with an ascetic outcry 
denouncing marriage as impure and enjoining 
celibacy upon the priests of God.^ Yet in all 
countries and in all ages, men, whether the 
defenders or the opponents of marriage, have 
almost unanimously assumed as a matter of 
course that the marriage ceremony gives a license 
to the indulgence of passion for its own sake 
with or without reproduction as a result. This 
view has had its foundation in the idea that 
individual desire rather than social duty is the 
determining motive in marriage. It has been 
considered that the taint of sensuality and the 
worst consequences of sexual indulgence are 
removed by the permanent union of one man 
and one woman in a home. But new conditions 
of life and a new conception of social unity 
demand a higher ideal of marriage. 

9 



lO ETHICAL MARRIAGE, 

The fundamental proposition of this book is 
that marriage and sexual union for procreation 
only are a primary social duty, presumably bind- 
ing upon all well-developed men and women. 
This thesis is elaborated according to the follow- 
ing outline : — 

The permanence of the marriage relation is 
sanctioned by the social necessities of reproduc- 
tion interpreted as including the procreation, 
rearing, and education of children. The purpose 
of reproduction is the renewal and improvement 
of human life, on the assumption that life is 
worth living when it is lived well. This purpose 
can be fulfilled only through general participation 
in family life on the part of the adult men and 
women best fitted for it. Marriage is, therefore, 
a dut}^ binding upon all well-equipped people 
who can not show some larger obligation that is 
inconsistent with this. 

Marriage, based on social duty, is a purposive 
co-operation, and, therefore, requires the union 
of persons fitted to co-operate permanently 
through friendship and community of ideals. 
Those who are engaged to marry ought to pre- 
pare for their work by securing as complete and 
accurate information with reference to the func- 
tions of sex as possible, and by free discussion 
with each other. 



INTRODUCTION-, II 

A married couple should have a definite pro- 
gram of procreation, and should confine their 
sexual unions strictly to its requirements. Any 
alternative course of life is fraught with danger 
to health, morals, love, and social responsibilities. 
The objections to continence in marriage have 
little force for men and women who live temper- 
ate lives and who desire to control their passions. 

The recognition of social duty as paramount 
in marriage, and the adoption of continence as 
the rule of life in marriage, would immeasurably 
enrich the most important personal relationships 
of life; namely, fatherhood, motherhood, child- 
hood, and friendship. 

The results of these fundamental reforms in 
the relations of the sexes would enable the 
family to perform its function as the primary 
unit of political society, and would unify the 
neighborhood, strengthen the co-operative Ufe 
of the city, ennoble the ideals of the State, and 
prepare the way for a religion whose purpose 
would be the perfection of human society in this 
world. 



I. 

THE SUPREME CO-OPERATION. 

We have been long expecting that you would 
tell us something about the family life of your citi- 
zens — how they will bring children into the world 
and rear them when they have arrived . . . 

for we are of opinion that the right or wrong 

management of such matters will have a great and 
paramount influence 07i the State for good or evil.^^ 
— Adeimantus to Socrates in Plato^s *^ Republic,^ ^ 



13 



CHAPTER I. 

REPRODUCTION A SOCIAI, FUNCTION. 

MARRIAGE is usually described as a con- 
tract between one man and one woman 
who choose to live together in sexual union. 
The peculiar nature of this relation and its far- 
reaching consequences have led the State to 
make this contract permanent and generally 
binding, even though both parties should wish 
its dissolution. Ordinarily divorce is granted 
only on the petition of one of the parties, show- 
ing that the contract has already been broken by 
the other. ^ 

Various principles are alleged to be at the 
basis of permanence in marriage. Possibly the 
most generally accepted one is that of the reli- 
gious ceremonial, that ' * marriages are made in 
heaven,'* and that no man has a right to **put 
asunder what God has joined together/' Mar- 
riage rites are still almost always performed by 
the servants of the Church, even though the 
contracting parties have little or no sympathy 
with organized religion. It is popularly believed 
in Christian countries that lifelong monogamy 
has in some way been sanctioned by the Divine 
Power as the only permissible form of sexual 

15 



l6 ETHICAL MARklAGB, 

union/ But the gradual relaxation of the hold 
which the Church formerly had on the lives of 
the masses, and the separation of Church and 
state, have been followed by a considerable revolt 
against our present form of marriage. Attacked 
in the arena of modern thought, monogamy has 
had to look beyond its supposed divine institution 
in order to justify itself as the exclusive method 
of propagation. 

The inherent character of love has been called 
in as a support to monogamy. It is said by 
persons of the romantic school that love is, in 
its nature, exclusive and permanent, and that, as 
it is the only true basis of marriage, the proper 
form of the latter is the lifelong union of one 
man and one woman. The flaw in this argu- 
ment is due to the fact that, however exclusive 
and permanent a few poetic attachments may 
have been, the great majority of loves, or at least 
of first loves, are not everlasting and exclusive. 
This is true, perhaps, chiefly because people are 
urged into love by instincts which could be 
approximately as well satisfied by union with 
any one of a great number of persons. There 
are, doubtless, many cases in which an intel- 
lectual and spiritual friendship between a man 
and a woman dies out after promising to them 
the permanent satisfaction of mature love. 
That this impermanence of exclusive affection is 



REPRODUCTION A SOCIAL FUNCTION, I ^ 

not wholly due to the caprice of sexual instinct, 
is indicated by the fleeting friendships which 
often spring up between persons of the same sex. 
lyove as a mysterious and irresponsible passion 
seems to furnish no adequate ground for the 
general acceptance of lifelong monogamy. 

The real sanction for this institution must be 
sought in social relations and social responsibili- 
ties.* It is, of course, recognized that the pres- 
ence of young children in a family imposes 
obligations upon the parents, and furnishes a 
strong reason for the permanence of the home 
life. Infancy covers a long period of years, and 
with our modern ideas of education the procrea- 
tion of a child calls for the formation of a family 
group which shall hold together for, say, twenty 
years. A child is not often ready to be thrown 
upon its own resources before that age. And 
if, after the procreation of one child, the father 
and mother should wish to cancel their marriage 
contract, they would be confronted by the 
necessity of giving twenty years' notice, during 
which time they would have to live together for 
the sake of the child. It is obvious that such a 
requirement would generally preclude the making 
of later marriages and the begetting of other 
children. Thus we see that however much a 
man and woman may be moved to marry in the 
first place by purely selfish considerations, no 



18 ETHICAL MARRIAGE, 

sooner is a child brought into existence than the 
permanence and organization of the family life 
are determined by obligations wider than the 
obligations of husband and wife to each other. 
The satisfaction of individual desires has brought 
consequences that are not individual. Responsi- 
bility appears. 

Now what is this mysterious process by which 
the individual is made social? How is it that 
a third party, silently entering upon the scene, 
often an unwelcome visitor and never asking to 
come, transforms a group of two persons who 
have fancied themselves one in their mutual 
self-satisfaction, into a social group whose poten- 
tial responsibilities extend to the limits of the 
world and to the end of time ? Why are children 
begotten and born into the world ? The imme- 
diate answer is that men and women are driven 
by a strong instinct into relations which involun- 
tarily and by the law of nature result in repro- 
duction. But why this reproduction? It is 
useless to urge this question, for it is one with 
the query about life itself. If we rejoice in our 
life and accept it as a good, the reason for 
reproduction is apparent. Children are born that 
human life may continue in the world. It is 
clear from the investigations of modern science 
that Nature believes life to be a good. And it is 
doubtless for this reason that strong sexual 



REPRODUCTION A SOCIAL FUNCTION. 1 9 

instincts have been developed in the lowest 
human beings, which overcome their aversion to 
pain and toil, and provide for the perpetuation of 
the race, whether they will or no. 

As soon, however, as men reach that stage in 
civilization and intelligence where they begin 
consciously to direct the forces of nature, — when 
they recognize duty, and their life becomes 
ethical, they begin to regulate and restrict their 
natural passions. Nature still provides for the 
propagation of beasts solely by means of sexual 
desire. But man has entered into the social state, 
and has begun to consciously direct his own 
destiny. He must find some other reason for 
propagation than mere instinct, or else be bound 
by his rational nature to repress that instinct. 
For human life is altogether too serious a phe- 
nomenon to be left to the caprice of animal desire 
after men have risen to a consciousness of social 
obligation. This is no mere theory. It is 
written on the face of every state-enacted regu- 
lation regarding marriage and the relations of 
the sexes. 

If conscious thought is able to conclude that 
life is worth living, thus re-enforcing the dogma 
of nature, it is to be supposed that society will 
encourage within well-considered limitations the 
reproduction of life. If, on the other hand, 
conscious thought is driven to the negative con- 



20 ETHICAL MARRIAGE, 

elusion that existence is an evil, it is hard to see 
how society can permit, much less encourage, 
reproduction, unless it be as an ignoble conces- 
sion to passion. Social responsibility, we may 
readily admit, has never, in any considerable 
community, become so universally acknowledged 
that the deliberate judgment of the thinking 
few could be enforced upon all, to the complete 
denial of individual desires. But religious and 
political institutions ought not, on the theory 
that life is evil, to encourage or countenance pro- 
creation. They ought rather, on that theory, to 
encourage suicide, or Buddhistic self-abstraction, 
or whatever process is believed to be most eflGi- 
cient in getting rid of existence.^ 

We may assume here that civilized nations, 
and especially the people of America, believe life 
to be on the whole a good, and therefore worthy 
of perpetuation. Yet, even granting this, 
where are we to get the social or the individual 
motive for reproduction, except from natural 
instincts? What reason have I to assume re- 
sponsibility for the perpetuation of life? How 
can anything be a motive to me unless it refers 
in some manner to my self-fulfillment ? We can, 
of course, accept social duty as a motive for 
action, when society, through the benefit of this 
action, is enabled to react upon and enrich our 
own lives. 



^2^ 



RBPkODUCTtON A SOCIAL FUlSfCTION. 21 

In order to get a clearer view of the rational 
basis for reproduction, let us examine a little 
more closely into the practical meaning of this 
constant process of race renewal. Let us waive 
for the present all individual considerations, and 
find, if we can, some motive that appeals to 
society as a whole, to encourage propagation. 
The motive is not very deeply hidden. Suppose 
that the process of renewal should all at once 
cease in any given society whose numbers could 
not be replenished from outside sources. What 
would happen ? Soon there would be no babies. 
In five years there w^ould be no little children. 
After twenty years there would be no boys and 
girls. After forty years there would be no 
young people. After sixty years there would be 
no middle-aged men and women. From then to 
the end the old folks would totter on together 
with gradually thinning ranks, until at last the 
society would become extinct in the most pitiable 
manner conceivable. Perhaps the persons com- 
posing this society would live as many years as 
though reproduction had not stopped. Let us 
suppose so. But what of the value of- their lives 
to themselves? It requires no great boldness to 
assert that life would be perceptibly less worth 
living if there were no children among us under 
five years of age. As the years went on with 
no younger generations growing up, life would 



22 ETHICAL MARRIAGE, 

become well-nigh intolerable before it were half 
spent. It is therefore clear that society in every 
generation has a powerful motive for the encour- 
agement of reproduction. We may say, then, 
that, in so far as human society is organized for 
the attainment of desired ends, and in so far as 
marriage is regulated by the state and by public 
opinion for the good of all, reproduction is a 
social function. From this point of view mar- 
riage comes to be, not a mere contract between 
two parties for their own satisfaction, enforced 
by the state as a disinterested arbiter, but a 
co-operation of two persons for the performance 
of a definite social function in which the state 
has a primary interest. 

May we not say that organized society, recog- 
nizing life to be a good, and the preservation of 
life to be one of the chief ends of association, 
calls upon its adult members to volunteer in 
couples for the social function of propagation ? 
This function is of such a nature that it requires 
for its fulfillment the permanent association of 
one man and one woman in a home. This con- 
dition is well known to all, and people enlist for 
marriage accepting the conditions. A citizen 
who volunteers to serve in the army for a certain 
period, is not at liberty to desert or to resign at 
pleasure. So with those who volunteer to serve 
the state as parents. They have accepted respon- 



REPRODUCTION A SOCIAL FUNCTION, 23 

sibilities, and taken up a co-operative enterprise 
that can not be abandoned with safety to society, 
and therefore marriage is enforced as an endur- 
ing contract. The contract is really between 
two persons on the one side and the state on the 
other. This view precludes divorce during the 
child-bearing and the child-rearing periods, except 
on the motion of the state or with its consent. 
Marriage, in the usual sense of that term, thus 
becomes primarily a social institution, and has as 
its motive a purposive co-operation. The whim 
of the individual is subordinated to the needs of 
the society of individuals. Marriage becomes 
wholly and utterly responsible. It remains for 
the individual under present conditions to choose 
whether or not he will undertake this social 
function, but when the choice is once made, he is 
bound, as an organ of society, to fulfill it with an 
eye to the social good. 



CHAPTER II. 

TH:^ fittest SHOUI.D MARRY. 

IF it be admitted that in human society repro- 
duction is a social function, it follows that 
there must be certain principles which should 
guide the individual in choosing whether or not 
he will volunteer to help propagate the race. 
And as the individual responsibility for choice 
in this matter can not rest on a ** freedom of 
indifference/' marriage, under certain conditions, 
is clearly a duty. 

We find that with the increase of civilization 
and luxury the ' * prudential check ' ' upon popu- 
lation is more and more exercised by the most 
intelligent classes of the people. With the 
higher education of women, it comes to pass that 
the choicest specimens of womanhood — choicest 
at least from the intellectual standpoint — either 
do not marry at all or else marry comparatively 
late in life, after the best part of their nervous 
energy has been expended in study or in active 
work. Intelligent and progressive young men, 
also, feeling the pressure of the times for a more 
expensive standard of living, and recognizing 
the full responsibility of parents for the care of 
24 



THE FITTEST SHOULD MARRY, 25 

their children, hesitate long before they marry, 
and when they do marry are careful to restrict 
the number of their oflfspring. It has now 
become a familiar regret of sociological writers 
that the sturdy old New England stock is dying 
out through its decreased marriage and birth 
rates, and giving place to the prolific and uncul- 
tured stock of French- Canadians who are taking 
possession of New England. 

A hundred years ago the famous English 
economist, Malthus, argued that the natural 
tendency of population is to increase more 
rapidly than the means of subsistence. Conse- 
quentl}^ he urged, men ought to exercise pru- 
dence and limit procreation so that the world 
would not be kept in constant misery by reason 
of there being too many people in it for all to get 
a comfortable living.^ 

If the Malthusian theory were unqualifiedly 
true, and the duty which its recognition involved 
could be made to appeal to all men equally,' then 
the plain obligation resting on society would be 
either to select only the best-equipped men and 
women for performing the function of reproduc- 
tion, or else to carefully limit the number of 
children allowed to each marriage. But ideals 
of social duty do not appeal to all men with equal 
force. Only the most intelligent and those hav- 
ing the most lively consciousness of social needs 



26 ETHICAL MARRIAGE, 

will respond to duties not yet embodied in law or 
general custom. The relations of the sexes are 
dominated by such strong passions that society 
as a whole can not put any effectual check upon 
procreation unless the policy to be adopted has 
the earnest support of a large majority of the 
citizens. The state can only require a low min- 
imum of duty. It remains for the more ad- 
vanced individuals to surpass this minimum in 
their own lives, and to raise social ideals by con- 
sistent practice and constant agitation. 

What might we expect, therefore, to be the 
consequence of teaching the Malthusian doctrine ? 
Ignorant and unthrifty people, unaccustomed to 
look at duty from a widely social standpoint, or 
to forego a present satisfaction for a future good, 
would be last to hear and slowest to heed the 
new precepts. On the other hand, the few who 
are most intelligent and most ambitious, would 
be the first to hear the doctrine and the readiest 
to heed it. Some, being conscientious students 
of social life, would be impelled by their sense of 
duty to postpone marriage or not to marry at all. 
While others, including most professional and 
business men, would be moved by their desire for 
an expensive standard of living to have few 
children even though this required the use of 
illegitimate methods of limiting procreation. If 
heredity and early environment count for any- 
thing, this application of the Malthusian doctrine 



THE FITTEST SHOULD MARRY, ^7 

would mean that the intelligent, energetic, and 
highly conscientious classes would transmit their 
qualities and their opportunities to a relatively 
smaller number of children than before. Mr. 
Galton, in his book on '* Hereditary Genius,'' 
has shown that a stock whose members marry 
early and do not specially restrict the number of 
their children will, in a few generations, enor- 
mously outnumber a somewhat more ' ' prudent ' ' 
stock. "^ This means that the Malthusian doctrine 
put into practice would defeat its own end and 
make its continued practice impossible by rapidly 
decreasing the proportion of prudent and well- 
conditioned people in the world, leaving the 
ignorant, the vicious, and the unthrifty poor to 
propagate the race.^ This process seems to be 
actually going on in Europe and America, and it 
is only through the beneficent influences of free- 
dom, and the stimulation to improvement fur- 
nished by a progressive ^ge, that the deterioration 
of the race in these countries is not more gener- 
ally apparent. 

The limitation of population ought to begin 
with the unfit rather than with the fittest. In 
the light of recent industrial progress, and with 
the advance of scientific agriculture and the 
hope that synthetic chemistry will some day 
be able to make our foods out of the original 
elements,^ the limitation of the numbers of 
population is seen to be a far less urgent neces- 



28 ETHICAL MARRIAGE, 

sity than the improvement of its character. 
With small families among the intelligent and 
the rich, both wisdom and wealth tend to become 
concentrated into the hands of a few. Great 
armies of men fall out of work, and the people 
of our cities suffer and almost starve when the 
country is full of food. This condition would 
be impossible if society were rightly organized. 
Leaders are what society needs. With a large 
number of intelligent, progressive men, social 
organization is kept flexible, and the circulation 
of ideas and goods is provided for. Movement 
is the chief enemy of distress. The prCvSsure of 
population upon the means of subsistence will 
result far sooner from the concentration into a 
few hands of the opportunities of wealth and 
leadership and the degradation of the masses 
into a condition of resourceless stolidity, than 
from the mere increase of numbers. In America, 
at least, we need not yet be troubled about a 
limit to the possibilities of the maintenance of 
a population which has in it a large class of re- 
sourceful, socially conscientious men and women. 
As a result of these considerations it seems 
clear that marriage and reproduction are a social 
duty binding with special force upon all adults 
not obviously incapacitated, who have good 
health, a sense of human obligation, and a belief 
in their own fitness for parenthood. If we have 
any ideal of social improvement, and unless we 



^v ■ . 



THE FITTEST SHOULD MARRY, 29 

are ready to abandon society to the less fit, how 
can we escape from the obligation to do our part 
toward contributing healthy bodies, sane minds, 
and a strong consciousness of duty to society 
that is, and that is to be ? Even if we were to 
deny heredity and prenatal influences altogether, 
still we could not escape from the fact that 
reproduction is especially the duty of the well- 
off, the gifted, the strong, and the conscientious; 
for there would remain all the influences of 
home life and home training, which indisputably 
have a far-reaching effect upon the character and 
the welfare of the next generation of adults. 

We rejoice that the trend of development is 
upward, and that out of most unpromising sur- 
roundings men of character and ability often 
rise. We rejoice that education and culture are 
in these late days being widely diffused among 
the masses of our people. We rejoice that the 
human heart has become so tender, and the 
human intelligence so keen, as to compel society 
to care for the weak, and to acknowledge its 
responsibility for the helpless. But shall we not 
strive loyally to resist that tendency of civiliza- 
tion which seems to be cutting off the flower 
of humanity, and not only preserving the less 
beautiful and the less fit, but even handing over 
to them the function of molding the character 
of the future? 



CHAPTER III. 

HINDRANCES TO MARRIAGE. 

THE conclusion that reproduction is a social 
duty presumably binding upon all who are 
fitted for it, and especially upon those who have 
ideals of social and individual betterment, will, I 
fancy, strike many unmarried persons, especially 
among women, as bitter irony. The state may 
call for volunteers, but two must volunteer to- 
gether. For the mere physical act of propaga- 
tion it would be a comparatively simple task 
to select a partner, and would require no far- 
reaching re-adjustment of individual life. But 
the social function involves much more. It 
necessitates the founding of a home, and the 
constant association of a man and a woman 
through a long period of years. Society de- 
mands of parents, not an embryo, but a fully 
developed, well-nourished, and highly educated 
individual, ready to take a place among the 
adult workers of the world. This involves for 
the parents almost unlimited co-operation and 
blending of lives. How, then, can anyone be 
sure of finding a fit partner for this highest of 
social functions ? Clearly, duty can not be bind- 
ing on one who has no opportunity to fulfill it. 
30 



HINDRANCES TO MARRIAGE. 31 

If we are to require marriage of men and 
women, we must prepare them for it, and make 
it as easy as possible for them to mate properly. 
How far is this done under present conditions? 
In the first place, parents as a rule studiously 
conceal from their children all knowledge of the 
physical functions of sex. From childhood boys 
and girls are separated by shame. In some 
parts of our own country and in most foreign 
countries they are kept apart in school. Many 
of our higher institutions of learning are not co- 
educational, and young folks who go away 
from home to college are in this way frequently 
compelled to spend the best years for choosing 
their mates in isolation from suitable companions 
of the opposite sex. A young woman who goes 
through a college or a normal school without 
laying the foundations, at least, of an association 
which shall ripen into marriage, finds her oppor- 
tunities for a suitable mating practically gone. 

Our present social arrangements are not made 
on the theory that marriage is a duty. We have 
taken for granted rather that it is almost a ne- 
cessity of nature, which is much more likelylto 
urge itself upon young people prematurely than 
too late or not at all. For this reason, and be- 
cause we feel that the physical basis of marriage 
is in fact sensual, degrading, and to be admitted 
only as a necessity of nature in mature Ufe, we 



3^ MTiiicAL Marriage, 

do what we can to keep the boys and girls from 
knowing themselves and each other. Further- 
more, by rigid social customs and the scorn of 
public opinion, we prohibit young women from 
actively seeking their mates. If, therefore, 
through unfavorable conditions or unusual pru- 
dence they have been prevented from forming 
alliances until the first bloom of youth and 
beauty has begun to fade, their opportunities 
have often passed beyond recall. It is idle 
to tell a young woman of twenty-five or thirty 
years that marriage is a duty, if you forbid her 
by the most humiliating penalties to seek a part- 
ner for herself. ^^ 

But the most serious obstacle to the recogni- 
tion of this duty as binding upon women is the 
fact that, under the sanction of law and custom, 
the social function of reproduction is associated 
with other more individual and less responsible 
activities, which often frustrate the real purpose 
of marriage. The fact is, that society has estab- 
lished marriage in the law, and enforced the 
permanence of the relation and the responsibility 
of parents for their children, at considerable cost. 
The state has purchased the services of the in- 
dividual by giving him a license for the indul- 
gence of his passions. Many women who would 
gladly participate in the propagation of the race, 
enduring with joy the pains of child-bearing and 



nmnMN-cES TO marriage, 33 

the sacrifices of child-rearing, are not willing at 
the same time to yield themselves as the instru- 
ment for the gratification of a man's passions, or 
to bear the physical burdens that the unlimited 
indulgence of their own would bring upon them. 
To these women, marriage under conditions that 
would in their opinion make reproduction a real, 
not merely a nominal, service to society is im- 
possible. And in so far as the state leaves duty 
to the interpretation of the individual, the judg- 
ment of the individual must, of course, be the 
ultimate determining authority for his action. 
In asserting the duty of marriage we shall, 
therefore, be compelled to modify our formula to 
meet actual conditions. Whether or not it is a 
woman's duty to actively seek a marriage-mate 
must depend upon circumstances. If her seek- 
ing can be done without bringing upon herself 
the odium of public disapproval, she ought to 
use all her opportunities to secure a suitable 
partner. There would be no gain, however, in 
adopting such a course that her end would be 
defeated by the antipathy of society, even though 
it were a foolish and unreasoning antipathy. 
Women must not, however, be too ready to 
excuse themselves from the duty of marriage. 
If they see the obligation of social service that is 
inherent in the cherishing of a social ideal, they 
ought not to neglect, through slavery to mere 
3 



34 ETHICAL MARRIAGE, 

conventionalities, the highest opportunity of 
their lives. We may say, then, that well-devel- 
oped men and women who think themselves 
fitted for parenthood are bound by their duty to 
society to marry and procreate, if by circum- 
stances or by reasonably persistent effort they 
can secure a good opportunity. 

There are many people to whom this duty will 
not appeal unless it can be definitely established 
in terms of their own self-interest. So far, we 
have emphasized social duty as a motive to mar- 
riage, because it ^3 too frequently left out of 
account. But this notive will not reach persons 
who, starting from the proposition that they 
have been brought into the world without their 
consent, and turned loose to look out for them- 
selves, affirm that they are primarily responsible 
to themselves and their own individual welfare, 
social duty being incidental and subordinate. Or, 
accepting the identity of individual and social 
interests, they may reach the easy conclusion 
that by devoting themselves wholly to self-real- 
ization they will in the end be rendering the 
highest service to society. This position rightly 
taken is practically unassailable. But may we 
not show that in most cases participation in the 
function of procreation is an indispensable ele- 
ment in the highest possible self-fulfillment? 
Along with the idea that life is worth living goes 



m^- 



HINDRANCES TO MARRIAGE. 35 

the other idea that the conditions of life can be 
improved by effort and adaptation. The doctrine 
of evolution sets before us an ideal of indefinite 
progress. We think not only of the perpetua- 
tion of the race, but of its improvement. If we 
conceived it as possible that we in this genera- 
tion could attain the goal of human development 
without propagation, it is difficult to see how 
marriage could be enforced^ as a duty, either 
social or individual. But ^ith the unlimited 
possibilities of development x^hich are opened to 
our view by the oontemplatiUn of the nature of 
man and his environment, as^ already revealed in 
natural and human history, "^we have set before 
us an ideal of individual and social life which can 
only be realized through a course of develop- 
ment reaching indefinitely into the future. Tho- 
reau has beautifully said, ' ' The only excuse for 
reproduction is improvement. Nature abhors 
repetition. Beasts merely propagate their kind; 
but the offspring of noble men and women will 
be superior to themselves as their aspirations 
are.^'^^ 

Young people, full of the enthusiasm of self- 
culture and free association, are sometimes led to 
overestimate their possibilities of self-realization 
within the span of their own lives, and also to 
overestimate the hindrances to self-realization 
which are necessarily attendant upon parent- 



36 ETHICAL MARRIAGE. 

hood. He is indeed a boldly optimistic man 
who can seriously believe himself capable of 
reaching the acme of perfection in his own life- 
time. To most of those who have a high ideal 
of individual human life, the possibility of pro- 
longing the process of improvement through an 
indefinite number of generations, must form a 
welcome and altogether needful opportunity of 
self-realization. Self-culture, if sought too 
eagerly and too individually, is like the mirage 
of the desert. The means of self -culture are 
social, and the experience of mankind as well as 
the instincts of the heart indicate that participa- 
tion in home-making and the rearing of children 
is one of the most potent means of character- 
building. IvCt not the enthusiasm of youth blind 
the eye of wisdom; for Nature has her seedtime 
and her harvest, and when the harvest time has 
come, it is too late to sow the seed. One can 
hardly conceive of any work that would stir the 
aspirations and satisfy the longings of the high- 
minded, noble-hearted man and woman so thor- 
oughly as the culture of humanity in themselves, 
and the transmission to the future of their high- 
est individuality through reproduction and the 
training of children to take their places. 

Some may fancy that they can best transmit 
their good qualities to society by their writings, 
inventions, or Qther notable works during their 



mNDRAMCBS TO MARRIAGE, Zl 

own lifetime. This may be true in a few cases 
where individuals of high genius are so absorbed 
in creative tasks that they have no time for fam- 
ily life.^^ But men are more important than 
books; splendid women are more important than 
charitable foundations; healthy children are more 
important than ingenious playthings; progress in 
individual self-control is more important than 
forwardness in the conquest of nature; health 
is more important than luxury. And for these 
most significant contributions to the welfare of 
the future, for these deepest impressions upon 
the character of the race, for these most direct 
transmissions of cultured individuality, procrea- 
tion and family life are by far the most generally 
efl&cient means. Whether interpreted in terms of 
social obligation or of individual self -fulfillment, 
marriage is an opportunity and a duty for those 
who are fitted for it. 



CHAPTER IV. 

THK FIT AND THK UNFIT. 

THE question now arises, Who are fit for 
marriage, and who are unfit ? We must 
first consider fitness from the physical stand- 
point, for the primary element in reproduction is 
physical. It is conceivable that society should 
set apart this function to a carefully chosen class 
of the best fitted men and women, and that 
children should be the wards of the vState in a 
much more direct way than they are at present. 
In his ideal '* Republic,'' Plato instituted this 
division of labor, and in the best days of Sparta 
the desire for the propagation of the fittest led 
to the sanction of unions not strictly consistent 
with monogamy. ^^ In a society whose population 
is to increase or even remain stationary, it is 
physically necessary that a large proportion of 
the people, certainly of the women, should par- 
ticipate in reproduction. And in default of ade- 
quate state control of this function, and upon the 
supposition that the monogamic family furnishes 
the most efiicient means for the care and training 
of children, procreation will be participated in by 
the majority of people of both sexes. The ques- 
38 



CTJPV 



THE FIT AND THE UNFIT 39 

tion thus comes to be, not so much who are 
especially fitted for parenthood, as who are so 
unfit that they should be excluded from it. 

There are certain evident disqualifications for 
marriage, which the state ought to define and 
rigidly enforce. These are for the most part 
connected with the taint of hereditary disease. 
Only a year or two ago there was discussed in 
the Ohio I^egislature, a bill for the purpose of 
establishing examining boards to ascertain the 
physical fitness of all candidates for marriage.^* 
If the bill had become a law, no one considered 
likely to transmit insanity, consumption, or 
syphilis, would be licensed to marry in Ohio. 
It is evident; however, that in the present state 
of public opinion, only the notoriously unfit can 
be prohibited by law from marrying. It remains 
for the individual to enforce upon himself the 
duty not to marry if he is unfit for procreation. 
Reproduction being a social function and involv- 
ing the well-being of the offspring even more 
directly than that of society at large, men and 
women who are responsible will observe that 
responsibility is twofold. It urges them to 
marry if they are fit, it fortftds them to marry 
if they are unfit. ^'' And the responsibility rests 
upon the individual to raise the standard of 
fitness above the bare minimum set by the state. 
Obviously people have no right to bring into the 



40 ETHICAL MARRIAGE, 

world children foredoomed to disease and suflfer- 
ing, and unfitted for a successful struggle with 
the conditions of life. Generally, the individual 
has, or may have, the fullest knowledge of his 
own physical fitness or unfitness for procreation. 
What is urged here is that a young person con- 
templating marriage, and, indeed, long before the 
time is ripe to form a marriage alliance, is in duty 
bound to ascertain so far as possible what his phys- 
ical condition is, and what hereditary tendencies 
to disease he carries with him; and to decide in 
the light of this knowledge whether or not he is 
fit to reproduce his kind. If he finds himself 
incurably unfit, it is as clear a duty as can be 
discovered, to forego participation in the propa- 
gation of the race. The social character of 
reproduction makes it the duty of the individual 
to bring his reason to bear upon the question of 
his own participation in this function, and to 
decide in accordance with his best knowledge 
and his highest ideals, rather than satisfy him- 
self with the performance of the low minimum 
of duty required by the laws of the state. 

Hereditary disease is not the only disqualifica- 
tion for procreation. A person with a deformed 
body or a weak constitution, who has no reason- 
able prospect of being able to adequately care 
for offspring and give them a happy home, 
ought not to have children. Similar considera- 



•X 



THE FIT AND THE UNFIT. 4 1 

tions apply to the number of children which any 
particular couple should bring into the world. 
No woman has the right carelessly to break her- 
self down by too frequent child-bearing. No 
man has the right to make his own life not worth 
living by reason of the multitude of hungry 
mouths at home which drive him into ceaseless 
toil, or urge him into dishonest methods of gain- 
ing a livelihood. On the other hand, too high a 
degree of physical fitness or of economic prosper- 
ity must not be required as a qualification for 
marriage. Perfect health is rare in both men 
and women. The vices of civilization, the igno- 
rance of physiological laws, and procreation by 
the unfit, have made us what we ought not to 
be. We hobble along through the world and are 
a rich prey to our fellows in the medical profes- 
sion, when we are not too much disabled to earn 
enough to pay our doctor bills. Even the best 
equipped of us are not ideally fitted for propaga- 
tion. We shall, therefore, have to be satisfied 
with a very moderate degree of fitness, and rely 
upon the care of our bodies and the careful nur- 
ture and training of our children to supplement 
favorable hereditary tendencies and overcome 
those that are unfavorable. And, in truth, how- 
ever much may be said of the importance of 
heredity, it is certainly a fact that a rational 
mode of life, especially when adopted in infancy, 



42 ETHICAL MARRIAGE. 

can accomplish wonders in behalf of health and 
nappiness. Moreover, it should be recognized 
as one of the most urgent obligations upon young 
people to prepare themselves for parenthood by 
avoiding all wasting of their energy, and by 
persistently building up their health if it is 
doubtful or poor. 

The possession of considerable property or the 
assurance of a large income is not so important a 
qualification for marriage and reproduction as is 
physical health. A sensible man and woman 
can live together without any great increase in 
necessary living expenses as compared with pos- 
sible earnings, and the rearing of one or even 
several healthy children need not be so great a 
burden as child-rearing usually is under our 
present wasteful modes of life. The opportunities 
for culture are becoming constantly more easily 
accessible to the young through the bounty of 
society at large. The most essential gifts left 
for parents to bestow upon their children are 
good health, affection, watchful care, and moral 
training. lyuxuries and expensive pleasures are 
not wanted to make children happy and well- 
fitted for social service. 

While, therefore, both physical health and 
economic resources must always be large ele- 
ments in determining one's duty in reference to 
reproduction, yet the primary qualification for 



THE FIT AND THE UNFIT. 43 

marriage is happiness and the capacity for 
makijQg one's children happy. The duty to 
marry and reproduce one^s good qualities in the 
next generation is thus incumbent upon those 
whose physical health does not fall distinctly 
below the general average, and whose economic 
prospects promise sufficient physical nourishment 
and opportunity for sturdy intellectual and moral 
culture for themselves and their children. If a 
man is to perform any function of social service 
well, he must make up his mind to live simply, 
truly, and cheerfully .)/ He should limit his per- 
sonal desires with reference to his social duties. 
But inability to be happy one^s self, and the 
probability of transmitting to offspring limita- 
tions which would deprive their lives of useful- 
ness and joy, not only exempt a person from the 
duty of procreation, but impose upon one the 
duty not to procreate. 

It remains for us to examine those exemptions 
from the duty of reproduction which arise from 
the consciousness of a paramount social obliga- 
tion, a call to some distinguished service. Phys- 
ical reproduction is, doubtless, the primary fact 
in the transmission of individual qualities of body 
and mind. Family life is the primary fact in the 
transmission of healthful conditions, good habits, 
and ethical ideals. But, without doubt, an indi- 
vidual of exceptional ability may bring himself 



44 ETHICAL MARRIAGE. 

to bear upon the next generation in a much 
wider, though somewhat less direct way, than by 
the procreation of children and the establishment 
of a home. A Colonel Waring may introduce 
sanitary reforms into a great city, which will 
have a direct and powerful influence for good not 
only upon the immediate environment of thou- 
sands of homes, but also upon the ideals of the 
children in them. A Walt Whitman may by his 
deathless songs celebrating the majesty of the 
body and the soul, no less than by^ the example 
of a simple and unyielding life, inspire the 
teachers of men for many generations. The 
poets, the prophets, the social reformers, the 
teachers of men, and the organizers of human 
effort may act powerfully and directly in behalf of 
the manhood and the womanhood of the future. 
And if their larger social service is really incom- 
patible with marriage and procreation, the more 
circumscribed function must give way to the 
broader one. As a rule, however, the wider 
service can better be performed as an enlarge- 
ment of the narrower, not excluding it; or else 
left to those whose circumstances compel them to 
forego the privileges along with the duties of 
parenthood. Before anyone excuses himself from 
marriage on the plea that he has a wider social 
function, let him make sure that he is not yield- 
ing to a selfish thirst for celebrity, or to the 



THE FIT AND THE UNFIT 45 

natural egotism of hopeful youth. I^et him also 
make sure that his avoidance of the limitations 
and consequent opportunities of home-making 
will help and not hinder an efficient response to 
the demands of his higher calling. 



II. 

PREPARATION FOR MARRIAGE. 

*' A love that doth not kneel for what it seeks ^ 
But faces Truth and Beauty as their peer ^ 



A love that in its object find eth not 

All grace and beauty, and enough to sate 

Its thirst of blessing, but, in all of good 

Found there, sees but the Heaven-implanted types 

Of good and beauty in the soul of man J*^ 

— fames Russell Lowell y in ** Love,'*'* 



47 



CHAPTER V. 

CURRKNT IDEALS. 

THE functions of the family are so delicate 
and so important that their proper fulfill- 
ment would seem to demand a degree of wisdom 
and self-restraint inconsistent with the narrow 
experience and the ardent passions of youth. 
The extraordinary importance of making a right 
start in life suggests the paradox that the 
younger we are, the wiser we need to be. This 
is strikingly true with reference to sex functions, 
for wrong habits formed in mere childhood may 
blight the whole of life, and children propagated 
during the hot days of youth can not be removed 
to give place to the more excellent workmanship 
of maturity. The paradox can be solved only 
through education. The younger we are the 
more the wisdom of our parents should be put at 
our command. Accurate knowledge of the func- 
tions and responsibilities of sex should be im- 
parted to children as soon as they have the desire 
to learn or the capacity to understand. Parents 
ought to encourage children to preserve and pre- 
pare themselves for the great function of mature 
manhood and womanhood. 

4 49 



50 ETHICAL MARRIAGE. 

The current conception that marriage and pro- 
creation are matters of personal convenience 
rather than of social duty, affects profoundly the 
preparations usually made for entering upon 
home life. According to the customs of our 
time a young man's preparation for marriage 
does not often begin until after he has fallen in 
love. It is supposed that he should make his 
plans and attend to his business without refer- 
ence to marriage, with the tacit understanding 
that sometime or other love will steal upon him, 
like a thief in the night, and imperiously amend 
his plans. When a man is in love he is not con- 
sidered strictly accountable for his actions. Neg- 
lect of his regular work and forgetfulness of his 
old friends are expected of him. The coming of 
love is a signal to him that he should begin to 
think of marriage. He is to seek the maiden of 
his choice, declare in extravagant terms that his 
life would be a blank without her, and beg her 
to marry him. If she consents, he begins to 
make preparation for the wedding and the home. 
But chiefly he gives himself up to a freer and 
more constant enjoyment of his sweetheart's 
society. They sit together and dream of the 
future, or dote upon each other's faces. Seldom 
do betrothed lovers consider together the funda- 
mental problems of the home, and especially do 
they avoid direct discussion of the relations that 



CURRENT IDEALS. 5 1 

lead to propagation and the fulfillment of the pri- 
mary social function of marriage. 

Owing to the colossal fact of shame, based on 
the recognition that sexual relations are usually 
sensual, few parents adequately instruct their 
children. Often, in consequence of imperfect 
education and lack of frankness during court- 
ship, there is a total misunderstanding between 
a newly married man and woman on the most 
fundamental conditions of their wedded life. It 
is not easy to find words to adequately express 
the absurdity of customs and moral sanctions 
which not only permit but almost compel silence 
between a pair of lovers in regard to the essen- 
tial relations of the most far-reaching co-opera- 
tion into which two people can enter. The 
necessity for this silence lies not only in the 
irresponsible character attributed to love, but 
also in the false notions of delicacy instilled into 
the minds of young women from earliest child- 
hood. 

A great deal is said about training girls for 
motherhood, and as a matter of fact, in some 
old-fashioned households they are instructed in 
domestic science. It is usually considered a 
desirable thing for a woman to marry. She 
is supposed to be better fitted for home-mak- 
ing than for anything else. And, indeed, her 
comparative physical weakness, and the hard- 



52 ETHICAL MARRIAGE. 

ships which she often has to endure if she lives 
an independent life, tend to make her lot, 
if unmarried, less attractive than that of an 
unmarried man. Moreover, a woman's instinct 
for motherhood, which is generally far stronger 
than a man's instinct for fatherhood, can not be 
satisfied without marriage. On the strength of 
thCvSe considerations, most young women are 
supposed to be willing, perhaps anxious, to 
marry. They are not, however, permitted to 
make an intelligent search for a partner, and 
take the initiative in arranging the co-operation 
necessary for home-making. 

A young woman is supposed to make no very 
permanent or serious plans, but to busy herself 
with housework, or study, or art, or society, or 
even with clerical work, until some man falls in 
love with her and ' ' proposes ' ' to her. Then she 
has the right to say ' 'yes ' ' or * ' no, ' * but is consid- 
ered foolish if she rejects a '' good '' offer. Her 
preparation for marriage is largely made up of 
waiting. She is not even taught to save her en- 
ergy, and frequently fritters it away by unhealth- 
ful dressing, exposure, overwork, or unwholesome 
social activities. No doubt great numbers of 
young women are permanently injured by careless 
or ignorant activity or by exposure at the periods 
of menstruation. So-called modesty, instructed 
by shame, is to blame for most of this waste of 
woman's powers. 



CURRENT WEALS. 53 

The fact can hardly be too much emphasized 
that shame is based on the conception of sex life 
as sensual and evil, — something to be hidden 
and avoided in pure conversation. Even the 
discussion of sex questions and more especially 
allusions to them in conversation are generally 
suggestive of evil or folly. The knowledge 
which can not be had through approved chan- 
nels is secured secretly in discolored and pol- 
luted fornT. Religion and morality prohibit the 
free discussion and the plain teaching of the 
facts of sex; but the prohibition prevents incal- 
culable good while leaving evil to thrive in its 
most prolific soil. The result of these lawless 
conditions is the most lamentable ignorance on 
the part of many young women, and the most 
perverted knowledge on the part of many young 
men.-^ 

After a longer or shorter association with 
men in trivial conversation and giddy pleasures, 
followed by the dreams and the insipidity of 
courtship, women generally sign the marriage 
contract with eyes unopened. When their fate 
is irrevocably sealed, they often awake to find 
that the contract is a bitter and humiliating 
fraud. The man sought the woman, drawn by 
sexual desire, more or less refined. The woman 
accepted the man, driven by the need of a home 
and the longing for motherhood. The two have 



54 ETHICAL MARRIAGE. 

entered into a lifelong agreement which gives 
them a property right in each other's bodies. It 
is no wonder that the great function of propaga- 
tion is ill-performed, when we see men and 
women, with no idea of their responsibility to 
society, and urged by purely personal desires, 
passing some months in idle talk and then sitting 
down to sip sweetness from each other's lips for 
the space of a honeymoon, while they heedlessly 
and passionately project into the shadowy future 
the destinies of the race. Pray, what are men 
and women? Are they nothing but the wanton in- 
struments of nature to keep the race alive on the 
earth? Have they no will ? Have they no duty ? 
Have they no opportunity for a better life than 
the satiating life of the senses ? 



CHAPTER VI. 

MOTIVES FOR MARRIAGK. 

THE idea that procreation is a social function 
and that marriage is an altogether respon- 
sible relation unerringly condemns the most 
generally received methods by which the sexes 
come together for family life. In former times 
and in other countries marriage has been consid- 
ered a responsible social institution. Giddings, 
the distinguished sociologist, finds three princi- 
pal stages in the social evolution of the family. ^^ 
In the first stage, well represented by ancient 
Roman and modern Japanese families, marriage 
is determined by religious and property considera- 
tions. Ancestor worship and the existence of a 
family cult make it imperative that every man 
should have a son to celebrate his funeral rites 
and maintain the family worship. If a man 
fails to have a son of his own blood, he is careful 
to adopt one. Furthermore, the patriarchal 
domain and the household goods are handed 
down from father to son, so that the institution 
of inheritance furnishes a second motive for 
marriage and procreation. Marriage is not a 
matter of free choice at all; but, being an insti- 

55 



56 ETHICAL MARRIAGE. 

tution with a distinctly recognized social purpose, 
the patriarch himself chooses a bride for his son 
and gives his daughter in marriage. 

In the second stage, which is represented by 
the current family relations of western Europe 
and America, marriage is, from the social stand- 
point, irresponsible. It is a free compact made 
between the parties directly concerned, and 
determined chiefly by the accident of so-called 
love, with little reference to fitness for co-opera- 
tion in a home. The traditions of '* religious- 
proprietary ' ' marriage still persevere, and are 
influential in limiting freedom of choice; but 
love, an emotional relation, quite mysterious and 
independent of conscious purpose, is at the pres- 
ent time recognized as the true motive force in 
marriage. This is the '' romantic '' stage in the 
evolution of the family. 

But there is a third stage, which has its begin- 
nings in the present, and which is destined in the 
future to restore to the family the character of 
a responsible social institution, without taking 
from it the freedom of choice and the sentiment 
of love that characterize the romantic marriage. 
The new family is to be founded on love, intelli- 
gence, and duty, and its central purpose will be 
the desire of men and women to reproduce and 
perpetuate their own peculiar traits where these 
traits are deemed of superior social value, lu 



MOTIVES FOR MARRIAGE, 57 

/other words, those who believe in themselves 
and their ideals will recognize marriage and pro- 
creation as a duty which can be fulfilled only 
through the ministry of love and comradeship. 
Giddings thus describes the ethical family : — 
* ^ There is no radical cure for degeneration but 
a pure and sane family life, which disciplines the 
welcome and untainted child in the robust virtue 
of self-control, and an unswerving allegiance to 
duty. Here and there a family of the ethical 
type may at present be discovered. The ethical 
family differs as much from the romantic family 
as the romantic family differs from the religious- 
proprietary family. To perpetuate a patrimony 
and a faith, the religious-proprietary family 
sacrificed the inclinations of individuals. To 
gratify the amatory preferences of individuals, 
the romantic family has sacrificed patrimony and 
tradition; of late, it has even gone to the ex- 
tremity of sacrificing children. The ethical 
family sacrifices individual feelings only when 
they conflict with right reason or moral obliga- 
tion, but then it sacrifices them without hesita- 
tion. It regards a genuine love as the most 
sacred thing in the world except duty, but duty 
it places first, and in the list of imperative duties 
it includes the bearing and right training of 
children by the vigorous and intelligent portion 
of the population/' 



CHAPTER VII. 

IvOVK AND FRIENDSHIP. 

ACCEPTING the ethical family as the ideal 
type toward which we shall persistently 
strive, we must at the outset consider what are 
the necessary qualifications that fit two people 
for co-operation in home-making. We have 
already referred to certain individual disqualifica- 
tions which impose celibacy as a duty upon those 
disqualified by them. We have now to ask in 
regard to the principles in accordance with which 
a man and a woman, each being individually 
fitted to participate in reproduction, may deter- 
mine whether or not they are fitted to reproduce 
together. 

The first requisite for intelligent and happy 
co-operation in the work of marriage is friend- 
ship. According to Emerson, the principal 
elements of friendship are tenderness and truth. ^^ 
These are certainly indispensable; and they 
involve community of ideals, for, without that, 
sympathy is superficial and the utmost sincerity 
is impossible. Friendship fills the background 
of all true love, and those lovers who are unac- 
quainted with friendship's austere sincerity are 
58 



LOVE AND FRIENDSHIP, 59 

in the thrall of animal passion. Marriage is a 
permanent companionship for purposeful work 
and healthful play_, and it is idle to enter into it 
unless the parties to it are moved by the strong 
force of tested and faithful friendship. ^^ 

lyife is not a mere holiday. We can not drift 
along in the enjoyment of love forever. Every 
act of our lives has some bearing on the future. 
The passion for exclusive possession that makes 
young men and maidens oblivious of duty when 
monopolizing each other's attention, and madly 
jealous at other times, is not love. Jealousy is 
said to be a proof of love. It is rather a proof 
of passion, and of the absence of pure love. 
What kind of a love is it that takes possession 
of a man's fancy and makes him incapable of 
loving all noble men and women ? Why should 
not the unselfish and ardent affection of a man 
for one woman prompt his heart to love woman- 
hood wherever its grace and tenderness are mani- 
fested ? Why should not a woman's love for one 
man make her more generous toward other men ? 
Desire is limited and exclusive; but friendship is 
its own reward. 

The world's literature is full of the poetry of 
love. The doctrine of irresponsibility is written 
in bold letters on the pages of poetry and fiction. 
The novel is the source of most young people's 
ideas of love, and in novels the curtain falls when 



6o ETHICAL MARRIAGE. 

the happy pair are united at the altar. Mar- 
riage is pictured as the goal of life, with the dim 
suggestion that the years beyond are full of sat- 
isfied love, and the home thronged with happy 
children. We read stories for pleasure, and to 
please us the novelist stops short of the trage- 
dies of married life. This is not, of course, uni- 
versally true, but in general the failures of home 
life find their place at the beginning of the tale 
and do not seem to be prophetic of similar fail- 
ures in the married life of the young people 
whose love-story forms the basis of the plot. 
Most novelists leave their readers with quickened 
imaginations, but with little additional wisdom. 
The gulf between the real and the unreal has 
widened, and the bridge built to span it has no 
foundation in the firm ground of fact. In reality, 
marriage is not a goal, but a first step, — a be- 
ginning in an earnest and lifelong work. The 
love that has its beginning in a glance at a pretty 
face or a manly form is no preparation for mar- 
riage. ' * Our friendships hurry to short and 
poor conclusions, because we have made them a 
texture of wine and dreams, instead of the tough 
fiber of the human heart.'' Only the faithful 
friendship born of the same ideals, and cultivated 
through a period of mutual helpfulness and sin- 
cere association, can furnish an adequate basis 
for the work of marriage. 



LOVE AND FRIENDSHIP. 6l 

Many people insist that there is and ought to 
be an irrational element in love, in spite of which, 
or on account of which, love is sacred and su- 
preme. There is, perhaps, in every friendship 
an element that we can not thoroughly explain. 
But love between the sexes, even in its highest \ 
form, is nothing more than friendship with sex- 
ual attraction added. And it is to this addi-^' 
tional element that reference is usually made in 
discussing the irrational character of love. In 
truth, there is a law of love. Men and women 
were made for each other, and, given common 
ideals and a common purpose, they need only to 
put themselves under favorable conditions, and 
love will come as surely as good seed will grow 
in warm, moist soil. 

If there is to be an irrational element in love, 
let it be in that part of love which is friendship. 
Nevertheless, friendship can be accounted for. 
The community of interest and the fitness for 
cooperation existing between friends are not 
founded on caprice. There is no doubt that pos- 
sible friendships are hidden all around us and 
never come to light because we do not cultivate 
sincere acquaintance with our fellows. Moved 
by uncontrolled impulses or selfish desires, we 
associate with each other superficially and when 
it suits our immediate demands for company or 
forgetfulness. Friendship caix b^ ctiltivated, 



62 ETHICAL MARRIAGE, 

What we need to insist on is that irresponsible 
love is no excuse for marriage. It is rather an 
indication that the lovers are not yet, and per- 
haps never will be, fitted for home-building. - 
Friendship and love, as qualifications for mar- 
riage, may be sought and found. lyove is not 
an accident. Its fruition should be the control- 
ling purpose of one's life. Jealousy is an indica- 
tion of fear and a selfish passion for possession. 
The high duty to which men and women are 
called by society at large as well as by the condi- 
tions of their own self- fulfillment, demands that 
they should not worship each other or abandon 
themselves to the enjoyment of selfish pleasures; 
but that together they should worship the ideal, 
and through their association strive loyally to 
further the realization of the true, the good, and 
the beautiful in the world. 

Friendship is an intellectual relation and in- 
volves full communication between the friends. 
The work of procreation is the divinest work of 
man. It is the work of race development. For 
its best accomplishment it demands the highest 
powers of the body and the mind, and the fullest 
co-operation of the sexes. There must be an 
intellectual and spiritual fitness or interfunction- 
ing between the married couple. Some ideal- 
istic and passionate natures demand that the 
lover be supremely strong and beautiful in his 



Love and friendship. 63 

actual personality, and that in the co-operation 
of love there be no painful hewings-down of the 
rough corners of character; that, in brief, the in- 
terf unctioning of love' be effortless, painless, and 
irresponsible. In their analysis of love they say 
even that the little habits and tricks, the blun- 
ders and limitations of the loved one, annoying 
or even offensive to other companions, should 
be dear and perfect and beautiful to the lover. 
They say that lovers should find in each other 
the satisfaction of every want, that they should 
**live and move and have their whole being" in 
each other. Under this conception of love, 
friendship for others, the approval of others, 
duty to the future, memories of the past, would 
all be indifferent to the two persons totally en- 
gulfed in each other. Recognizing that these 
conditions are impossible of fulfillment for the 
full period of legal marriage, some persons reject 
marriage altogether as immoral, as a prostitution 
of their individuality, as counter to the laws of 
their own life. 

No one can consistently hold this view who is 
not entirely satisfied with himself. The demand 
that perfect spiritual, intellectual, and physical 
interfunctioning shall be the sole condition upon 
which I will consent to co-operate with another 
for the fulfillment of my own life and the perpetua- 
tion of the race, is based upon an unconsciously 



64 ETHICAL MARRIAGB. 

exaggerated estimate of my own character. It 
is as much as to say to my would-be mate, ' ' Lover, 
I am perfect. I have no limitations. I need no 
culture. I can fulfill myself apart from you. If 
you desire to be my co-worker you must be 
utterly fitted to me as I am. You must ask of 
me no sacrifice of my minutest desires. You 
must in every moment of our life together want 
what I want, and do what I do, and think what 
I think. If I wish to suffer pain for you, it shall 
be so; but in no respect shall your will limit my 
desire. My individuality shall not be disturbed, 
but we shall be one and inseparable. ' ' This is 
idealized self-love, not rational self-realization. 

In the preparation for marriage the lover 
should demand most of himself, remembering 
that, like **the mote that is in thy brother's 
eye/' the limitations he discovers in his friend 
are, quite possibly, his own. The essence of 
rational love is that it should be exacting in its 
demands upon itself, and shrink from no pain or 
wearying effort calculated to make it generous 
and strong. It is, after all, more important to 
me that. I should be worthy of receiving love 
than that my companion should be worthy of the 
love I bestow. How pitiable it is to hear a lover 
boast of his sweetheart, or a maiden of her lover! 
How thinly veiled is the egotism and the self- 
praise! Too often the character of the boaster is 



LOVE AND FRIENDSHIP, 65 

a silent argument against the boast. Even in 
the co-operation of marriage, individualities are 
not so completely merged as to destroy individ- 
ual responsibility. 

A woman who in her passionate idealism had 
rejected a marriage ^'upon the basis of a com- 
mon purpose merely, and of mutual adaptation 
to that purpose,'' at a later time defended her 
action in the following words : ' ' I might have 
married upon this basis when I planned to do so, 
and now been fighting against a secret contempt 
for the man whose face I was to see across from 
me at the table three times a day for innumera- 
ble weeks, and uncounted months, and eternal 
years! There would be hideous things in my 
mind into whose faces I dared not look. I should 
cringe before my own unformulated thoughts. 
I should be living a dastardly, craven, self -de- 
stroying life." This is, no doubt, a true picture 
of the married life of all too many women. But 
what is the trouble? Clearly these marriages 
were not formed ' * upon the basis of a common 
purpose," ''and of mutual adaptation to that 
purpose." They were founded upon an irre- 
sponsible passion which took no adequate ac- 
count of mutual fitness and of the rigorous 
self-discipline necessary for co-operative action. 
They did not count the cost of sinewy love. 

It is useless to expect complete interfunction- 
5 



66 ETHtCAL MARRIAGE, 

ing between two people in the early days of their 
companionship. To shrink from marriage be- 
cause of the inevitable readjustments of habit 
incident upon the establishment of home life is 
not a brave way to enter upon the double work 
of social fulfillment and self-realization. It is a 
confession of arbitrary individualism, that, if 
carried out in all lines of life, would make society 
impossible and subject man to the caprice of 
an unregulated environment. Complete spirit- 
ual interfunctioning can not, from the nature 
of the case, exist between a man and a woman 
until their relations have been enriched by com- 
plete physical interfunctioning; for the unity of 
the work of their bodies reacts upon and intensi- 
fies the unity of their intellectual and emotional 
lives. 

It is safe for another reason also, to enter 
upon marriage without a complete conjunction 
of the inner life. lyOve is not a caprice, and we 
have no reason to fear that we are groping in a 
blind alley simply because we can not see the 
end of the street we are traveling. If the first 
and succeeding steps are rightly taken, the goal 
of life will be reached at the end of married life, 
rather than at the beginning; and no amount 
of demonstrative or persistent passion before 
marriage can insure a happy home, unless the 
lovers take every step in their co-operative 



LOVE AND FRIENDSHIP, 67 

life responsibly and in accordance with right 
reason. Therefore we may safely say that the 
best qualification of two persons for marriage 
is the ideal of self-culture and the disposition 
to help each other in the attainment of well- 
poised character, and at the same time to accept 
cheerfully and unswervingly the social duties 
involved in reproduction and family life. 

There must be in each of the parties to mar- 
riage the capacity for appreciating the ideals, 
the efforts, the successes, and the limitations 
of the other. The common purpose of procrea- 
tion must include a whole philosophy of life, an 
ideal of improvement, and a method by which 
that improvement is to be secured. This is the 
only guaranty of that equal relationship between 
the 'home-makers which their task demands. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

Tun DUTIES OF COURTSHIP. 

IF friendship is the necessary basis of true love, 
then it becomes clear that men and women 
who propose to marry must be free to discuss all 
the relations of marriage without reserve. And 
if marriage is regarded as a purposive co-opera- 
tion, it is hardly necessary to say that would-be 
co-operators of ordinary common sense will be 
prudent enough to formulate their plans and 
examine their mutual relations before entering 
into a binding contract. No marriage has the 
promise of success unless the lovers are so con- 
scious of the responsibility of the relation, and 
so trustful of each other, as to be willing to 
ignore the barriers of so-called propriety and 
reach an explicit understanding regarding the 
relations which shall obtain between them after 
marriage. The frank discussion of the sex-life 
and the duties and responsibilities of parenthood 
forms only the bare essential of the free com- 
munications of courtship. This precaution is 
especially necessary because of the false ideals 
in regard to sex which are prevalent in society, 
and because of the limited knowledge that par- 
68 



THE DUTIES OF COURTSHIP, 69 

ents as a rule vouchsafe to give their children. 
And even if this present evil condition were to 
be removed, failure on the part of lovers to dis- 
cuss these matters, the most vital in their future 
relationships, would show an utter unfitness for 
the responsibility of reproduction. What good 
reason is there for long hours of courtship and 
t^oluminous letters of lovers, if they do not lead 
to mutual understanding and rightly adjusted 
relations in anticipation of marriage ?^^ Being 
in love is no excuse for being puerile. Not that 
lovers should keep their faces drawn and always 
discuss solemn subjects, but that they should 
associate healthfully and with some reference to 
their future. Indeed, the exigencies of purpose- 
ful marriage require that young men and women 
should be free to discuss the relations of sex 
with each other even though they are not 
pledged to marry. 

The main preliminary qualifications for mar- 
riage are health, friendship, capacity for love, 
community of ideals, freedom of communication, 
oneness of purpose. Little needs to be said here 
about the more external qualifications. It is of 
great importance that those who are to unite in 
reproduction should have attained about the 
same stage in their mental, spiritual, and phys- 
ical development.^^ Although this is not a mere 
matter of age, the marriage of an old general to 



yo ETHICAL MARRIAGE. 

a blooming society girl of twenty years is cer- 
tainly absurd, save from the point of view that 
a girl is justified in bartering her body for a dis- 
tinguished name and a place in the public eye. 
In regard to wealth, education, and social stand- 
ing, no universal rule can be laid down. Yet if 
all things are equal, persons whose opportunities 
for culture and standards of living have been 
much the same can best make the readjustments 
necessary for the co-operative work of home-life. 
Fitness for each other, intellectual, spiritual, and 
physicial, should nevertheless override the acci- 
dental barriers of possessions and opportunities. 
No rule is likely to work well when applied to 
the marriage of a pauper or a millionaire. In 
most cases such persons would do well to live 
celibate lives and bequeath their poverty or their 
riches to the state. 

It follows from what has been said of the 
qualifications for marriage that no alliance can 
rightly be made until the lovers have discussed 
their fitness for co-operation and the conditions 
upon which they can unite their lives without 
sacrificing their ideals. ^^ It is, therefore, clear 
that a proposal to marry should be simply a pro- 
posal to consider the question. No man can 
rightly offer himself unconditionally, and no 
woman can accept an offer unconditionally. It 
is rationally impossible for a man to make up 



THE DUTIES OF COURTSHIP, 7 1 

his mind fully that he wishes to marr}'' a particu- 
lar woman without ever having said a word to 
her about it, and then '* propose '' to her, leav- 
ing her to think it over by herself and answer 
^^yes*' or *'no/' 

Nevertheless, even a proposal to discuss the 
question should not be lightly made; for many 
people who might have a temporary liking for 
each other would be unable to understand each 
other's point of view in a personal discussion of 
marriage. Freedom of discussion does not mean 
license for irresponsible and trivial discussion. 
Some advisers of young women have warned 
them to treat a proposal of marriage with kind- 
ness and dignity, because it is the highest com- 
pliment a man can pay a woman. Whether or 
not it is a compliment depends upon the char- 
acter of the man. To say ' ' I love you ' ' is far 
more uncertain praise than to say ' ' I believe in 
you.'* No responsible lover will urge his plea 
for a pledge of marriage by passionate and per- 
sistent assertions that he is ** hopelessly in love." 
Rather, * * I offer myself faintly and bluntly to 
those whose I effectually am." 

In courtship there is no excuse for any other 
than a generous rivalry. ^^ Love can not well be 
bound by fetters. The free man is a better 
workman than the slave. No one needs to 
throw a noose about the neck of love. In the 



72 ETHICAL MARRIAGE, 

courtship of equals seeking to be mated in the 
way best suited to the performance of social 
duties, there would be no obstacle to freedom of 
initiative on either side. Even now women are 
free to cultivate the acquaintance and friendship 
of men in social life. And when marriage is 
considered a legitimate topic of conversation 
between them, something to be discussed as 
sensibly as any other great social question, it 
will not be necessary for the eager maiden to sit 
dreaming of the happy but uncertain day when 
the prince of her life will come ; but she can be 
looking for him among her companions and 
friends. 

Many women who would be glad to make 
ready for marriage, but who feel the heavy hand 
of social custom forbidding them to seek a life- 
comrade, miay think that the realization of 
woman's freedom in courtship is a mere dream. 
From childhood her ideas of love have been 
perverted by cheap fiction. But if a girl could 
free herself from this false instruction at the age 
of sixteen or eighteen, and make up her mind to 
act naturally in her relations with men, there is 
little reason to believe that she would even now 
be seriously limited in her freedom to seek per- 
manent association. The trouble is that her 
ideas of freedom and the way of realizing them 
through honest communication and sincere friend- 



THE DUTIES OF COURTSHIP. 73 

ships do not usually come until she has missed 
the best opportunities of her life. The respon- 
sibility, therefore, rests upon parents, teachers, 
and other experienced friends, to suggest to 
young girls the principles upon which preparation 
for marriage should be based in order that 
responsible freedom of action may take the place 
in their lives of irresponsible waiting. 

There are persons who object to long engage- 
ments ; but with the certainty that many mis- 
takes will be made in first love, the choice of a 
mate should not be made irrevocable until it has 
stood the test of considerable time. Moreover, 
procreation should not be undertaken until men 
and women have reached maturity. And although 
there is no objection to the marriage of a self- 
controUed couple several years before they are 
ready to have children, yet, if they are able to 
continuously prepare themselves for fatherhood 
and motherhood without marrying early, it 
would often be the part of wisdom to postpone 
entering into the legal contract until their prepa- 
rations are nearly complete. The objection to 
late marriages, that habits of life have become 
fixed and readjustments are difficult, would have 
little force if the conduct of life during the 
whole period of young manhood and young 
womanhood were consciously guided by the ideal 
pf expected marriage and family-Ufe. 



74 ETHICAL MARRIAGE. 

The procreation of children is no more a 
mystery than is the growth of plants. Marriage 
ought not to be an ' ' eye-opener ' ' to the purest 
woman or the most austere man. One of the 
strongest incentives to sexual desire among young 
people is the curiosity to see the parts of the 
body that are usually concealed, and to know the 
facts of life that are not openly discussed. And 
no doubt the excessive passion that is usually 
indulged by newly married people results for the 
most part from the reaction attendant upon a 
sudden change in the degree of their intimacy. 
It will hardly be denied, even by those who are 
unwilling to acknowledge social duty as para- 
mount in marriage, that every reasonable means 
should be used to bring passion under control. 
It is recognized that sexual desire as a domi- 
nating, sensualizing force is the bane of civilized 
nations, and threatens the permanence of race 
improvement. It is a well-known fact that the 
entrance upon married life is often attended by 
excesses which turn hope into dread, affection 
into disgust, and health into sickness and ex- 
haustion; yet there is generally no attempt made 
in the preparation for marriage to avoid these 
incidents. Can there be imagined a more fool- 
hardy way of dealing with the conditions of self- 
control than by passing from a reserved courtship 
into the closest physical intimacy in a single day ? 



THE DUTIES OF COURTSHIP, 75 

In default of careful and full instruction in 
the forms and functions of sex during childhood, 
every young person, when he comes to the age 
of self-government, ought to set about acquiring 
from pure and scientific sources the knowledge 
so much needed as a preparation for marriage. ^^ 

The most important preparation for marriage 
is self-training in high ideals. It would be folly 
to permit great intimacy between lovers if their 
minds are constantly dwelling upon the indul- 
gence of sensual passion as the ideal of married 
life. With such an ideal no man or woman has 
any moral right to marry or to cultivate friendly 
associations with persons of the other sex. If 
marriage is impure and sensual, let us have none 
of it. But if life is a good, and if procreation is 
a duty to society, if the building of a home is a 
social function, then let us be free from sensual 
ideals and the false limitations that they put 
upon us. Especially let us not, in the name of 
virtue, recklessly enter upon marriage with no 
ideal of self-control, no training for it, and no 
preparation for meeting the temptations which 
a sudden change in intimacy under the legal 
immunity of the marriage ceremony inevitably 
brings. 

The consummation of the preparations for 
marriage is often an elaborate ceremonial, an 
expensive wedding-feast, and the formal an- 



76 ETHICAL MARRIAGE. 

nouncement of the entrance upon wedded life. 
This celebration, as marking a great epoch in 
the lives of both parties, and especially of the 
woman, takes place everywhere among the races 
of mankind. The founding of a home is certainly 
an occasion of primary importance to the two 
persons directly associated, as well as to society 
at large. It is the occasion, if rightly considered, 
when two friends, having thoroughly tested their 
fitness for co-operation, inscribe their names on 
the roll of volunteers for the work of perpetu- 
ating and fulfilling the life of the state and of 
humanity. Unfortunately, the celebration of this 
event is usually conducted in a way not calcu- 
lated to keep clearly before the volunteers the 
nature of the duties they are called upon to per- 
form. The ceremony itself is generally so worded 
as to convey the idea that the woman is enlisting 
in the service of the man, while he binds himself 
to treat her kindly, to love no other woman, and 
to supply her with the goods of this world. The 
wording is perhaps of minor importance, but at 
least it ought not to contradict the social func- 
tions of marriage and the ideal relations of man 
and woman in the home. And the ceremony, 
symbolizing so happy and purposeful an enter- 
prise, might well be a work of art, simple but 
true and beautiful. There is no reason, either, 
why a marriage supper with music and dancing 



THE DUTIES OF COURTSHIP, 77 

should not be given; but to load the table with 
dainty and costly viands, pampering to the taste 
and stimulating to the senses, is directly and 
grossly inconsistent with the healthful ideals of 
duty and happiness that should be suggested on 
this, of all occasions. The marriage feast should 
be simple and strictly healthful. lyct the cere- 
mony and the supper be surrounded with as much 
beauty as means will permit, provided that on no 
account it be made an occasion for the display 
of wealth or pride or sensuous tastes. There 
should be no voluptuous music, no wasteful 
decorations, no absurd or sensual dressing. 

The whole celebration of marriage, except the 
ceremonial form required by law, may well be 
dispensed with, if it is impossible to surround 
the wedding with the loyal fellowship of friends 
whose ideals are not sensual and irresponsible. 
Formal marriage announcements are no more 
essential than the wedding celebration. But if 
they are to be used, they should be sent only to 
friends who are known to cherish an ideal of 
purity and purposeful association in marriage, or 
they should carry on their face an unmistakable 
expression of the ideals to which the uniting 
persons acknowledge their allegiance. For, how- 
ever much we may hesitate to admit it, the fact 
remains that most people now cherish a sensual, 
individual ideal of marriage, and hardly see at 



78 ETHICAL MARRIAGE, 

all that social functioning should predominate in 
it. That the expression of the ideals of an indi- 
vidual couple at the time of their marriage is not 
wholly impracticable is shown by the appearance 
of the following words at the head of a marriage 
announcement not long ago : — 

' ' We believe that I^ove is not the caprice of 
passion. 

*' We believe that I^ife is the purpose, not the 
accident, of lyOve. 

''Therefore, we, who love, join hands that in 
us lyif e may increase and grow more beautiful. ' ' 



III. 

THE CONTROI. OF PASSION IN 
MARRIAGE. 

^^ Among savage peoples the phenomenon every- 
where confronts us of wedded life without a grain of 
love. Love then is no necessary ingredient of the 
sex relation; itisnot an outgrowth of passion. . . . 
One day from its mother's very hearty from a shrine 
which her husband never visited nor knew was there ^ 
which she herself dared scarce acknowledge, a child 
drew forth the first fresh bud of a love that was 
not passion^ a love that was not selfish, a love 
that was an incense from its Maker ^ and whose 
fragrance from that hour went forth to sanctify the 
world,' ^ — Henry Drummond^ in the ^^ Ascent of 
Manr 



79 



CHAPTER IX. 

A PROGRAM OF PROCREATION. 

AT the time of marriage young people are 
confronted by new conditions. They have, 
until then, been restrained from physical inti- 
macy by the strongest sanctions of religion and 
morality. But when the ceremony of marriage 
is performed, all formal restrictions are removed 
from the indulgence of their passions. They are 
brought into the new relation of sexual inter- 
course. 

The normal result of the copulation of the 
sexes is the impregnation of the female and the 
birth of a child at the end of the pregnant period. 
The birth of a child puts a serious limitation on 
the freedom of the mother during the child's 
infancy, and materially increases the father's 
economic responsibilities for many years. The 
child may grow up to be a distinguished citizen, 
and render the highest social service; it may 
come to be a criminal or a pauper, and cause 
society unmeasured expense and trouble: the 
chances are, however, that it will become an 
average man or woman, and help to make up the 
rank and file of citizenship. In any case, the 
6 8i 



82 ETHICAL MARRIAGE. 

character of the new individual will have a far- 
reaching effect upon the happiness and virtue of 
other individuals, few or many. Thus conse- 
quences of the most serious import to society- 
follow naturally and palpably upon a single act 
of sexual union. 

We have already seen the social necessity for 
reproduction. It follows that the seriousness of 
the act should not deter men from accepting the 
responsibility of procreation, but that they should 
accept it intelligently and after due preparation 
for it. Marriage, as a social institution, has for 
its primary purpose the propagation of human 
life. Under the conditions of life that obtain in 
well-settled communities, prudence would indi- 
cate that a family should include from two to 
half a dozen children. Seldom do parents want 
more than six. Seldom ought they to have fewer 
than two.^* It follows that according to nature's 
law, sexual intercourse should be had at long 
intervals and during a limited portion of adult 
life. This conclusion is so widely at variance 
with the practices of married life that it needs 
to be stated more explicitly in order to be fully 
understood. Put in the negative form, it means 
that there should be no intercourse except when 
children are desired, and that at such times inter- 
course should be limited to the reasonable needs 
of its function. It should never take place 



A PROGRAM OF PROCREATION. 83 

when the condition of the adults or their pros- 
pects for the future make offspring undesirable; 
and never when impregnation is improbable, or 
when the woman is already with child. In a 
word, sexual intercourse should be for procrea- 
tion only?^ 

The intelligent fulfillment of the function of 
marriage requires that married people should 
have a program of procreation, and that every 
act of intercourse should be deliberate and pur- 
posive. In order to get the subject before us in 
its details, it may be well to set forth here a pro- 
posed course of action for married couples who 
wish to become parents. 

Before procreation is actually undertaken, the 
man and woman should have overcome the feel- 
ing of physical shame in each other's presence, 
which, as a result of early education and the 
consciousness of sensual desires, is practically 
universal between adults of opposite sex. The 
would-be parents ought further to be in good 
health and loyally affectionate toward each other 
at the time of procreation. I^et them choose the 
time of the year when propagation should begin, 
and, all the conditions being fulfilled which make 
them immediately fit to co-operate in reproduc- 
tion, they should have a single complete sexual 
congress. Time should then be given to ascer- 
tain whether or not conception has taken place. 



84 ETHICAL MARRIAGE, 

Normally menstruation ceases during pregnancy. 
If the menses are not interrupted, the probabili- 
ties are strong that conception has not taken 
place, and that another copulation will be neces- 
sary. Intercourse may take place once a month 
until there is reason to believe that the woman is 
pregnant, or until the season favorable to repro- 
duction has passed. After impregnation has 
been secured there should be no more intercourse 
until another child is desired. 

Two or three points in this program require 
some further explanation. If people undertake 
parenthood as a social duty and as a means for 
the highest self-fulfillment, they can not look 
upon each other's bodies with shame, or regard 
the necessary act of intercourse as degrading. 
It is, for this reason, important that procreation 
should not take place until husband and wife 
have become familiar with each other's bodies. 
The nervous shock of first intercourse is much 
greater when it is accentuated by the acute 
sensation of strangeness usually accompanying 
the first physical intimacies of a man and a 
woman. If for no other reason, at least on 
account of the desirability of surrounding the 
procreative act with normal sentiments that 
will not embarrass the frank instruction of 
children in sexual matters, the feeling of shame 



A PROGRAM OF PROCREATION^, 85 

should be entirely absent from the union of the 
sexes for procreation. 

The time of year in which impregnation takes 
place is important, because it fixes the time of 
child-birth; and the usual illness of the mother 
on that occasion, and the welfare of the new- 
born babe are both more or less affected by the 
season. Few women would choose for their 
confinement the sultriest weeks of summer, or 
the raw and changeable days of November and 
March. They would rather choose the pleasant 
months of spring or early autumn, when the 
weather is less capricious and early escape from 
child-bed to the open air is invigorating to both 
mother and child. So much may be said for 
general differences in the seasons. Obviously, 
the opportunity to choose the time of child-birth 
would be of great advantage to innumerable 
women who have to plan their work for more 
than one season ahead. It is altogether proba- 
ble that under normal conditions not more than 
one or two copulations would be required to 
induce pregnancy, and, therefore, that a choice 
of the season for child-birth could readily be 
made. 

There seems to be some uncertainty about the 
signs of pregnancy during the few weeks im- 
mediately following conception. ^^ This un- 



86 ETHICAL MARRIAGE. 

certainty is undoubtedly due in most cases to 
abnormal conditions. A healthy woman whose 
condition has not been perturbed by the func- 
tionless gratification of passion may be reason- 
ably assured that the cessation of the menses 
after intercourse means that she is with child. 
Further intercourse would not only be unnec- 
essary but presumably injurious to the develop- 
ing embryo. 

A program of action so utterly inconsistent 
with general practices and with most teaching on 
the subject of marriage, is certain to meet with 
much vigorous opposition. Objections are raised 
to the practice of continence in marriage on the 
score of health, pleasure, fulfillment of love, 
and obedience to natural instinct. Before dis- 
cussing these objections, it will be convenient 
for us to ask, What are the alternative courses 
open to married people who reject continence? 
If they do not accept a program similar to the 
one here advocated, what kind of a program do 
they propose to adopt?" 



CHAPTER X. 

AI^TERNATIV]^ TO CONTINENCE. 

THE alternatives to continence in marriage 
may be definitely stated as follows: — 

1 . Sexual intercourse limited only by the lim- 
its of passion, with procreation unregulated. 

2. Sexual intercourse for pleasure Umited to 
the so-called * * safe ' ' periods, including the peri- 
ods of pregnancy and lactation, with intercourse 
for procreation when offspring is desired. 

3. Sexual intercourse limited only by the limits 
of passion, and undesired conception prevented 
by the use of special devices; any chance impreg- 
nation being accepted as an unavoidable misfor- 
tune, or disposed of by abortion. 

4. Sexual intercourse for love, unaccompanied 
by the orgasm; procreation being intelUgently 
regulated. 

I. It is difficult to see how a mature person 
with any respect for himself or society, and with 
any ethical consciousness, could ever deliberately 
adopt or approve the program of unlimited indul- 
gence. There is reason to believe, however, that 
many newly married couples, apparently intel- 

87 



88 ETHICAL MARRIAGE. 

ligent and conscientious, adopt precisely this 
course. They pay the penalty in physical 
exhaustion, in the uprooting of love, and in a 
family of unhealthy children. No inconsiderable 
number of women pay the penalty in death. One 
author, speaking of unrestrained indulgence, 
says: — 

* ^ The writer frequently meets among his 
acquaintance married people who are visibly 
sufferers from this cause. They are always ail- 
ing, the husband can not half attend to his busi- 
ness, he has a headache, or a fever, or a cold, or 
sickness of the stomach, or bowel complaint; and 
his wife is more or less in the same condition. 
The close observer sees in their lusterless eyes, 
their sodden and greasy faces, and their trem- 
bling hands, evidences that an almost nightly 
indulgence is kept up of the pleasures of the 
marriage-bed, which is the origin and cause of 
all their ailings — sapping, as it does, the very 
foundations of their vitality.'' ^^ 

Another authority, writing many years ago, 
said: — 

* ' The married man who thinks that because 
he is a married man, he can commit no excess, 
however often the act of sexual congress is re- 
peated, will suffer as certainly and as seriously as 
the debauchee who acts on the same principle in 
his indulgences, perhaps more certainly, from his 



ALTERNATIVES TO CONTINENCE, 89 

very ignorance and from his not taking those pre- 
cautions and following those rules which a career 
of \dce is apt to teach a man. Many a man has, 
until he married, lived a most continent life; so 
has his wife. But as soon as they are wedded, 
intercourse is indulged in night after night, nei- 
ther party having any idea that this is an excess 
which the system of neither can bear, and which, 
to the man, at least, is simple ruin. The prac- 
tice is continued until health is impaired, some- 
times permanently, and when a patient is at last 
obliged to seek medical advice, he is thunder- 
struck at learning that his sufferings arise from 
such a cause as this. People often appear to 
think that connection may be repeated just as 
regularly and almost as often as meals may. 
Till they are told, the idea never enters their 
heads that they have been guilty of great and 
almost criminal excess; nor is this to be won- 
dered at, as such a cause of disease is seldom 
hinted at by the medical "men they consult." ^^ 

In his ' ' Principles of Ethics ' ' Herbert Spencer 
discusses in carefully chosen words the signifi- 
cance of excesses in married life. He says : — 

' ' Chronic derangements of health supervene, 
diminished bodily activity, decline of mental 
power, and sometimes even insanity. Succeed- 
ing the mischiefs thus caused, even when they 
are not so extreme, there come the mischiefs 



90 E;THICAL MARRIAGE, 

entailed on family and others; for inability to 
discharge obligations, depression of spirits, and 
perturbed mental state, inevitably injure those 
around. Several specialists, who have good 
means of judging, agree in the opinion that the 
aggregate evils arising from excesses of this kind 
are greater than those arising from excesses of 
all other kinds put together/' ^^ 

Unrestricted intercourse is so violently opposed 
to individual welfare that the imperative demands 
of health, and of pleasure itself, generally put 
some check upon the gratification of passion after 
the first few months of married life. But the 
inequality of the burdens of sex, coupled with the 
inequality of passion in men and women, very fre- 
quently keeps the wife in a state of slavery to 
her husband during the greater part of their 
married life. This condition of affairs violates 
the laws of health, the laws of love, and the laws 
of morals. Social functions, and even individual 
welfare are prostituted to the caprice of inordi- 
nate passion. Children are brought into the 
world without welcome and with no inheritance 
of health or of virtuous tendencies. Marriage 
under these conditions is utterly irresponsible 
and immoral. ^^ 

2. The manifest evil of the mode of life just 
described leads many married people — how 



ALTERNATIVES TO CONTINENCE, Qt 

many no one can tell — to bring the gratification 
of desire within certain more or less definite 
limits. Physical exhaustion, and more especially 
the desire not to increase the size of the family, 
induce the regulation of intercourse. It is popu- 
larly believed that during a portion of each 
woman's month, most remote from the menses, 
she is barren, and that, accordingly, intercourse 
can take place at that time without danger of 
undesired procreation. This period, extending 
over a number of days, is known as the ** safe *' 
time, according to the phraseology of people who 
seek f unctionless indulgence. The rule of limit- 
ing intercourse to a particular time in every 
month may have proved in many cavSes an effec- 
tive precaution against unwelcome child-bearing; 
but occasional failures prove that there is no 
time in the menstrual month when a woman can 
be absolutely sure of immunity from concep- 
tion.^^ At best, every woman would have to 
run great risks in attempting to find out exactly 
at what times in the month she is likely to be 
barren. 

When the indulgence of passion is, fox pru- 
dential reasons, limited to the **safe'' period, 
pregnancy and lactation are often made the 
occasion for a much freer indulgence, because, 
as is said, ''things can't be any worse.'' Indul- 
gence at these times is so obviously unnatural 



9^ ETHICAL MA RR TAGS, 

and so revolting to our ideas of decency that no 
discussion of it would be required if the sexual 
nature of woman were not said to furnish an 
unique exception to the general nature of female 
animals. It is asserted, and apparently on good 
authority, that women are often much more pas- 
sionate during pregnancy than at other times. 
Pregnant women, it is said, frequently have all 
kinds of peculiar desires; and for the sake of 
mother and offspring, it is contended, these 
desires should be satisfied whenever possible. ^^ 
A case is recited of a worthless drunkard whose 
mother, a pious Methodist, was seized during 
pregnancy with an almost resistless craving for 
whisky. Her desire was, however, repressed, 
and as was said in after years, the unborn child 
was impressed with the mother's unsatisfied 
craving for drink. Unfortunately for the 
theory, this was not the only one of her sons 
who drank to excess. Such evidence as this, 
based upon untrained observation, does not go 
far to prove that unnatural desires on the part of 
pregnant women should be gratified. Such 
symptoms probably indicate that no adequate 
preparation for child-bearing has been made, or 
that the woman is permar^ently unfitted for 
motherhood. It flies in the face of nature to 
suppose that a healthy woman, normally pre- 
pared for child-bearing, and giving due attention 



ALTERNATIVES TO CONTINENCE. 93 

to her diet and her physical activities, should 
experience any marked desire for sexual inter- 
course, or develop other unfunctional appetites, 
during pregnancy. Passion at that time must 
rather be the outgrowth of habitual indulgence, 
or the irritation caused by the growth of the 
fcetus in the womb, and incorrectly translated 
into a desire for copulation; or, possibly, merely 
the reaction from aversion to intercourse when it 
is likely to result in unwelcome child-bearing. 
During the time of gestation and nursing the 
mother needs all her surplus energy to minister 
to the needs of her child. ^* To waste this force 
in the indulgence of passion is, from the indi- 
vidual standpoint, miserably foolish, and from 
the social standpoint, hardly less than criminal. 

If no indulgence is allowed during pregnancy 
and lactation, what are the objections to inter- 
course during the regular ''safe'' periods? In 
the first place, as we have already noted, there 
is no absolutely safe period, and the consequences 
of procreation are so far-reaching, and the respon- 
sibility of parenthood is so great, that people can 
not afford to run ayiy risk of undesired propaga- 
tion, especially when all risk is avoided by simple 
abstinence from a voluntary act. 

Furthermore, we. should expect from nature 
that, if a woman is more likely to conceive at 
one time than at another, she would feel stronger 



94 ETHICAL MARRIAGE. 

sexual desire at that time. It is so with the 
females of the lower animals, but it is claimed 
that woman differs from all other females in 
being continuously susceptible to passion. So 
few women have the opportunity to choose when 
they will have intercourse that perhaps the 
majority of them are unable to determine 
whether or not their 'desire [shows periodicity. 
Some, however, experience passion near the 
menstrual period, while they are indifferent or 
averse to intercourse during the ' ' safe ' * period. 
The whole question of the relative strength and 
pertinacity of the passions in the two sexes can 
not be accurately answered because of the preva- 
lence of abnormal conditions. There is, how- 
ever, a deepseated belief that women are less 
passionate than men,^^ and this view seems to 
accord with the results of biological investiga- 
tions, in which the male element is described as 
active and seeking, while the female element is 
passive and receiving. Although it is impossible 
for a scientist, to say nothing of a layman, to 
dogmatize in regard to the general facts of pas- 
sion in the human species, it seems safe to say 
that on a priori grounds we should expect 
woman's passion to be more or less periodic, and 
to be strongest when she is readiest for impreg- 
nation. Thus, reason and experience, so far as 
they go, indicate that sexual intercourse at a time 



ALTERI^ATIVES TO CONTINENCE, 95 

when conception is not likely is indifferent or 
positively distasteful to woman. We have in 
this fact a most important reason for condemning 
the rule of married life here under discussion. 
Love ought to be essentially equal. The woman 
who yields her body to a man for his pleasure 
merely, either in return for money, or for a 
home, or for peace in the household, prostitutes 
herself to him. Even caresses are demoralizing 
if they are received with mere passivity. Their 
legitimate function is to communicate affection 
and stimulate kindly feeling. Caresses should 
be given for the sake of the one caressed, not for 
self-gratification merely. We find, therefore, in 
inequality of desire a grave objection to sexual 
intercourse at times when its natural function is 
in abeyance. Intercourse at such times is almost 
always for the gratification, or for the '* health/' 
of the man. 

A third objection to this course lies in the fact 
that functionless gratification is wasteful and 
demoralizing. To seek pleasure for pleasure's 
sake not only defeats function, but even lessens 
pleasure. To make pleasure the end in sexual 
relations is particularly bad because the highest 
physical powers and the strongest social ties are 
here involved, and if they are prostituted, the 
whole man is in the mire. 

3. Involving less limitation upon the gratifica- 



96 RTHtCAL MARRIAGE. 

tion of passion, but more regulation of procrea- 
tion, comes the third alternative to continence; 
namely, the use of special devices to prevent 
conception. The general use of such devices in 
any country has often been pointed out as the 
mark of moral and physical degeneration. It is 
no part of our purpose to take up in this book 
the various means that are used with greater or 
less success to thwart nature in the matter of 
propagation.^^ It is asserted by some that con- 
ception can be prevented by means entirely 
harmless to physical health. But many methods 
used for this purpose are surely harmful, and it 
seems doubtful whether, on general principles, 
we could expect a method to be found which 
would be uniformly successful and at the same 
time cause no weakening of the organs of genera- 
tion. As no one, apparently, claims that con- 
ception can be prevented by agreeable means, the 
discomforts of thwarting nature must be set 
over against the pleasures of indulgence, even 
where pleasure alone is considered. But the 
practice of preventing conception removes the 
most important restraint upon excessive indul- 
gence, while it adds to the wastefulness and 
injury of frequent intercourse the humiliating 
consciousness that the indulgence of passion is 
unnatural, and subjects the man or the woman 
to the physical harm usually if not always the 



ALTERNATIVES TO CONTINENCE. 97 

result of artificial methods of limiting procrea- 
tion. Of course the woman is freed from the 
burdens of unwelcome child-bearing, and both 
parties are relieved of the obliquity which 
attaches to the procreation of offspring fore- 
doomed to misery. But frequently the attempt 
to prevent conception fails and the couple are 
confronted by a most humiliating condition. 
In such cases the unwelcome offspring is some- 
times grudgingly accepted and cared for as far 
as formal law requires; but often abortion is 
attempted. ^^ When this by no means uncommon 
practice is resorted to, the mother is subjected 
to greater physical danger than in child-birth 
itself. ^^ It is said that many women who are 
conscientious in all other matters do not scruple 
to rid themselves of their unborn children by 
whatever means they can command. 

This moral irresponsibility and recklessness 
of physical danger on the part of married women 
is doubtless to be attributed to the conditions 
which cause so much involuntary motherhood. 
A good deal is being said about ^ ' prostitution 
within the marriage bond. ' ' One author reminds 
us that our laws sanction * ' the rape of a married 
woman.'* ^^ This is no pleasing picture of the 
relations of husband and wife, but it seems to 
be accurate. There can be no doubt that abor- 
tion is a crime against the mother's own body, 

7 



98 ETHICAL MARRIAGE, 

and against the moral instincts of humanity. 
How much less can be said of the act which 
causes involuntary motherhood in marriage for 
the sake of a man's gratification? One of the 
blackest crimes that can be committed is the 
bringing into the world of a deformed or idiotic 
child where conception has been involuntary, 
and abortion has been tried without success. 

Few would venture to publicly defend abor- 
tion in any case except where the life of the 
mother demands the sacrifice of the embryo. 
But sexual passion is so strong and the sophis- 
tries of love are so subtle that not a few people 
reckoned among the best advocate the use of 
some devices to prevent conception. One author 
starts out with the major premise that *' it is the 
right of every child to be well born. ' ' *^ His 
minor premise is that men will not limit their 
intercourse to the natural function of rightly 
conditioned propagation. His conclusion is that 
conception should be prevented when offspring 
is not desired, '^e accept the major premise 
without qualification. But the minor premise 
is the death-warrant of ethical humanity, and 
we are not ready to subscribe to it. We may 
sum up our objections to the gratification of 
sexual passion accompanied by the use of means 
to prevent conception by saying that this prac- 
tice deliberately thwarts natural laws, opens the 



ALTERNATIVES TO CONTINENCE. 99 

door wide for sensuality, aggravates the physical 
wastefulness of functionless pleasure, and is 
generally, if not always, physically injurious to 
the man, to the woman, or to both. 

4. Some recent writers propose a fourth alter- 
native to continence. They profess the greatest 
horror for the existing evils of marriage, and 
ardently advocate responsible procreation and 
the emancipation of woman. They assert, how- 
ever, that sexual intercourse has two distinct and 
equally worthy functions; one to perpetuate the 
race, the other to bring pleasure or spiritual 
development to the individual. They propose 
as a solution of the problem, that the union of 
husband and wife, when propagation is not its 
object, should be so controlled as to prevent the 
orgasm. The practice, it is said, was prevalent 
in the Oneida Community, and receives the 
unqualified support of a number of writers. Its 
advocates are, as a rule, persons with a disposi- 
tion to accept the teachings of occultism. They 
have a ready explanation for the mysterious 
forces of life which have so far baffled inductive 
science. To them sexual attraction appears to 
be the highest manifestation of the laws of the 
universe. There is no need to affirm or deny in 
this place the possibility of attaining, in indi- 
vidual cases, sufficient conscious control of the 

Life. 



lOO , ETHICAL MARRIAGE. 

internal mechanism of the body to prevent the 
culmination of the sexual act while the organs are 
in union. It is certain, however, that most 
people, in their present stage of spiritual devel- 
opment, would run great risk in attempting to 
put this theory into practice. And one is forci- 
bly reminded in this connection of the story in 
which the Irishman who said he would keep as 
far away from the precipice as possible was 
selected as coachman in preference to other 
applicants who boasted how near they could 
drive without going over. 

Without disputing, therefore, the physical 
possibility of some people's putting into practice 
this theory, variously designated as '' Male con- 
tinence,'' '' Zugassent's discovery," and '*Kar- 
ezza," what objections to its teachings may we 
raise? In the first place, there is the difficulty 
suggested in the reference to the Irishman and 
the precipice. It will appear to many people 
that putting one's self under conditions particu- 
larly favorable to the discharge of the life-fluid is 
hardly the method most conducive to the main- 
tenance of self-control and the conservation of 
energy. And those who are not prepared to 
accept the dictum of occultism which teaches 
that the mind may bring all the activities of the 
body, internal as well as external, under con- 
scious control, will look with suspicion on a 
practice the aim of which is to thwart the laws 



ALTERNATlTES TO COl^TINENCE, lOl 

of nature and make the body a mere instrument 
of a sublimated self. The internal mechanism 
of the body seems to work very well when it has 
a chance. The mind is fully occupied with the 
function of controlling external activities, and 
providing conditions under which the body can 
do its work normally. Furthermore, if the soul 
is supreme, it is not clear why the development 
of spiritual life and the most exalted love in the 
married couple should be dependent upon phys- 
ical contact. The first objection to the practica- 
bility of the rule of life here under discussion is, 
therefore, that it involves an acceptance of occult 
principles and takes the functions of sex out 
of the realm of science and puts them into the 
realm of mysticism. 

Another objection lies in the fact that the 
separation of pleasure from organic function, and 
the exaltation of the former into a definite 
motive for conduct is always demoralizing. 
''lyCt us eat, drink, and be merry; for to-mor- 
row we die,'' as a philosophy, is subversive of 
duty and destructive of all healthy social life. 
The pursuit of pleasure for its own sake ends in 
surfeit and degeneration. 

Another difficulty that presents itself concerns 
the education of the young and the relations of 
unmarried people. If procreation be not recog- 
nized as the sole determining function of sexual 
union, it is practically impossible to show why 



10:2 ETttlCAL MARRIAGJE. 

gratification for pleasure, health, or spiritual 
ecstasy should not be permitted to the unmar- 
ried. From this standpoint, to teach children 
chastity would be about as consistent and effect- 
ive as it is for men who smoke and drink to 
teach their boys the evil effects of tobacco and 
liquor upon the young. The only way to present 
the relations of sex to a child is to come with 
an open countenance and a clear, unreserved ex- 
planation of natural functions. The distinction 
between prostituting the body for carnal pleas- 
ures and prostituting it for spiritual pleasures 
could not be easily comprehended by young peo- 
ple. As a matter of fact, the alternative to con- 
tinence now being considered seems to have been 
discovered by persons who, by excesses in the 
early years of married life, had brought upon 
themselves the natural penalties of unrestraint. 
The new idea came to them as a way of escape 
from the most grievous burdens of indulgence 
without requiring the abandonment of the grati- 
fication which their ideals and their habits had 
made almost a necessity. 

We have now noticed the several possible 
alternatives to continence, and have found that 
none of them satisfies the demands of social duty 
or personal ethics. It remains to see what force 
there is in the several objections to continence 
as such. 



CHAPTER XI. 

OBJECTIONS TO CONTINKNCB IN MARRIAGE- 

THE objections to marital continence most 
often uiged may be formulated as follows: — 

1. Continence is injurious to a man because 
the more or less frequent emission of semen is 
unavoidable, and causes injury unless it occurs in 
the normal way; i. e. , through sexual union. 

2. Continence is ascetic; it is the old celibacy 
idea slightly modified; it crucifies love, and slaps 
nature in the face; it is altogether wrong from 
the standpoint of morals and religion. 

3. Continence makes self-control more difl&- 
cult. The easiest way to live a rational life is 
by moderation in the gratification of desires; 
unsatisfied passion is cumulative. 

4. Granting that procreation is the determin- 
ing function of sexual intercourse, yet so little 
is known about the laws of reproduction, and 
the chances of impregnation as the result of a 
single union are so small, that when offspring is 
desired frequent intercourse should be had until 
the woman is without doubt pregnant. 

I. Those who object to continence on the 
score of health do not claim that this rule of life 

103 



I04 ETHICAL MARRIAGE, 

is antagonistic to woman* s physical well-being. 
The indulgence of passion is man's '' necessity.'* 
Thus we have at the outset a claim of essential 
inequality in the relations of the two. Woman's 
body becomes an instrument for the preservation 
of man's health. This condition of affairs, 
though not distasteful to people of the Oriental 
school, is not relished by Western women, or by 
men who regard women as their equals and com- 
panions. But if nature and the welfare of the 
race unite in afBrming this proposition, we 
ought not to reject it for a mere sentiment! 

Nature's position can be ascertained by the 
observation of the sexual habits of animals. It 
appears that everywhere the male is endowed 
with more active and continuous sexual 4esires. 
Often at the pairing season fierce battles are 
fought among the males for precedence with the 
females. Some animals are monogamic, and 
with them the male has to content himself with 
the gratification of desire when a single female 
is willing to receive his approaches or can be 
forced to do so. But although the male is 
usually the stronger of the two, the female can 
as a rule maintain control over her own body, 
and it is a matter of general observation that the 
male is received only at certain periods favorable 
to procreation. On the other hand some animals 
^re polygamous, and among them the result of 



CONTINENCE IN MARRIAGE. 105 

competition is a selection of the few strongest or 
most cunning males for pairing, while all the 
rest are excluded from the gratification of their 
passions. This condition obtains among domes- 
tic animals where their sex life is exploited by- 
man for breeding purposes. 

It is not inconceivable that a socialistic state 
might adopt a similar system with reference to 
human marriage, the few choicest men being 
reserved for procreation and all the rest made 
eunuchs. There would be something to say 
for such a regulation on the score of the im- 
provement of the species, artificial selection being 
used simply to accelerate natural selection. But 
the consciousness of brotherhood and the belief 
in democracy render this solution of the problem 
of sexual desire impossible among the most 
enlightened peoples. Moreover, if sexual inter- 
course were required for health we could not 
limit its privileges to the few who are best fitted 
for procreation. But nature, although indicating 
that male passion is more persistent and more 
active than female, does not provide means for 
its gratification, as she certainly would if its 
restraint were injurious to the individual. The 
evident reason for the activity and persistence 
of sexual desire in the male is nature's care that 
the perpetuation of the species shall not fail. 

We have now to inquire how it is that men 



I06 ETHICAL MARRIAGE. 

have succeeded in outwitting nature, and have 
secured for themselves the unKmited indulgence 
of their sexual instincts, and upon what grounds 
the claim of man's ''necessity'* is now made. 
Evidently human beings through their superior 
intelligence can influence each other in a way 
impossible to lower animals. And undoubtedly 
man has habitually secured the privilege of 
unlimited sexual indulgence by giving woman 
something in exchange. The appeal to fear, to 
the hope of reward, and to the sentiment of love 
has overbalanced woman's natural aversion to 
functionless unions, and she has bartered the use 
of her body for comforts and luxuries, or has 
given it away in obedience to the demands of a 
mistaken altruism. This relation of the sexes to 
each other has become fixed in the institution of 
human marriage so that the terms of the bargain 
are generally taken for granted without any 
specifications. And undoubtedly woman's pas- 
sions have been greatly developed in the process, 
so that now they are often almost as persistent 
as man's. Man's passions also have increased 
with indulgence, until he has come to consider 
their gratification a legitimate and necessary 
right of marriage.*^ 

Sexual desire manifests itself with different 
degrees of strength in different persons of the 
same sex; and we may reasonably conclude that 



CONTINENCE IN MARRIAGE. I07 

its strength is largely determined by education 
and habits of life. All moralists require chastity 
of the unmarried, and thus admit that it is pos- 
sible. We know, however, that multitudes of 
boys are addicted in some degree to the solitary 
vice, and that many unmarried men indulge their 
animal instincts through promiscuous relations 
with unchaste women. There is no doubt that 
the perversion of passion renders it more imperi- 
ous, and that indulgence makes self-control more 
difficult. 

It is a disputed question whether or not a 
healthy man needs to discharge his seed at more 
or less regular intervals. Many of the most 
renowned thinkers of the world have been un- 
married, while on the other hand many men have 
undoubtedly been physically and mentally weak- 
ened by marital excesses. The conditions of life 
are so variable and so obscure that it is not easy 
to dogmatize upon the internal processes of the 
physical organs. But if the discharge of semen 
be necessary for a healthy man's relief, nature 
has certainly provided a remedy by causing in- 
voluntary emissions.*^ A more frequent dis- 
charge induced by the use of a woman's body 
would not seem especially suited to the require- 
ments of health and bodily economy. We need 
not, therefore, attempt to answer the purely 
scientific question as to the necessity of emis- 



io8 ETHICAL Marriage. 

sions. Most boys and- men undoubtedly have 
them, and have them more frequently than is 
good for their physical welfare. These excessive 
wastes are caused by indulgence in thought or 
action, and are not a reason for indulgence. 

Passion is cultivated, it would almost seem, 
deliberately. The ideal of marriage itself as a 
state in which people have freedom of indulgence 
without being even reproved by the current sanc- 
tions of morality, is a powerful factor in develop- 
ing insatiable desire in the unmarried. Shame, 
also, which conceals the body and makes sex a 
mystery, no doubt stimulates the passions. Most 
important of all, the lack of correct teaching in 
early childhood lets boys and sometimes girls, 
drift into the *' indiscretions of youth *' which, if 
they do not ruin health, at least make life sensual 
and desire well-nigh uncontrollable. The pas- 
sions are further stimulated by suggestive art 
and obscene stories. Not only is the mind left 
to drift into sensuality, but the body is pampered 
by rich food, and the system is demoralized by 
stimulants. There can be no doubt that liquor, 
* narcotics, and highly-seasoned or unsuitable 
foods either directly stimulate the sexual organs 
or render the nervous system less capable of 
keeping them in control. Furthermore, the 
organs are frequently irritated by ill-fitting gar- 
ments, or through the neglect of cleanliness. 



CONTINENCE IN MARRIAGE. 1 09 

And lastly, in a strange climax of absurdity, 
some men regard sexual intercourse necessary 
on account of the stimulation of desire induced 
by sleeping with their wives. As if men did not 
sleep with women chiefly for the purpose of 
gratifying their passions. 

When we consider how little effort is made to 
guard against excessive sensuality, and how it is 
almost deUberately cultivated, the assertion of 
man's '* necessity ' ' appears to be a flimsy ex- 
cuse for anti-social action. Continence has been 
proved by some to be a perfectly feasible and 
altogether salutary rule of life. The objection 
urged against it on sanitary grounds indicates, 
not that continence is impracticable, but rather 
that the duty of self-restraint, if fully carried out, 
would prevent the existence of conditions under 
which continence is said to be unhealthful.*^ 

A convincing answer to this claim that health 
requires the indulgence of passion, even if we 
were to grant that men would be better off, on 
the whole, for occasional union with women, is 
found in the humiliation of the latter. Suppos- 
ing that women should say, *'Itis not healthy 
to be pregnant and bear children. It is a great 
drain upon our strength. It limits our freedom. 
It causes us much pain and often kills us out- 
right. Therefore Vv^e will have none of it. L^et 
the race be perpetuated as it may. Social duty 



no ETHICAL MARRIAGE, 

does not bind us to sacrifice comfort, health, and 
freedom for somebody else's sake.'' Such a pro- 
test put into execution would hurry society 
along the road to extinction, and men would 
fiercely denouitce women's cruel selfishness. 
But what is to be said for the man who, for the 
sake of his individual satisfaction, or even for 
the sake of some slight increment of health, 
would pile his burdens upon the back of a 
woman already loaded down with the pains and 
dangers of menstruation, pregnancy, and child- 
bearing? What is to be said of the young fellow 
who has wasted himself until, to alleviate his 
condition, he marries a healthy girl to shift upon 
her and a family of children as much as he can 
of the penalties of his indiscretion ? What is to 
be said of the rugged husband who, for the sake 
of his '* health," compels his wife to choose 
between chronic pregnancy and the discomforts, 
dangers, and moral deadening attendant upon 
abortion and the use of expedients to prevent 
conception? The doctrine of man's '' necessity " 
was born of sensual indulgence, and is perpetu- 
ated by self-deception and overweening self- 
ishness. 

2. The second objection urged against conti- 
nence is that it is ascetic. It is said to be based 
on the principle that pleasure is evil, and that 



CONTINENCE IN MARRIA GE. Ill 

natural desires ought to be suppressed. Let it 
be understood at the beginning that nature is 
good, but that rational men should direct and 
control natural tendencies. Otherwise, reason 
would have no function. The question arising 
here is like the one involved in the use of stimu- 
lants. Some people assert that temperance does 
not mean abstinence, but moderate use. The 
ancient Greek is exhibited as the model of a 
temperate man. Such a thing as total absti- 
nence from wine-drinking would have seemed 
absurd to the Greek. And the evidences of his- 
tory show that he was not an ascetic — unless it 
were at Sparta — in the matter of sexual pleas- 
ures. It further appears that this very absence 
of self-denial was a powerful factor in the 
degeneration and collapse of the Greek nation. 
The rational definition of temperance is, 
*' Moderate and right use of good things, and 
total abstinence from bad things. * ' We are not 
temperate with the fire because we burn our 
fingers only once a week. We are not temper- 
ate in the use of arsenic because we take a dose 
but once a year. And furthermore, we are not 
temperate in the use of bread, if we eat three 
loaves of the best home-made at every meal. 
Thus the question of abstinence from any par- 
ticular thing is to the temperate man merely a 
question of fact. If he knows that a thing is 



112 E THICAL MARRIA GE, 

harmful or is likely to be, he will abstain from 
it. If a limited use is good for him, he will use 
it in a limited way. 

There are two classes of people widely sepa- 
rated by their attitude toward the indulgence 
of desire. One takes the ground that if the 
effect of a particular act is known to be bad in 
most cases, and if there is no clear reason for 
expecting a good effect from it in a particular 
case, they will abstain "from it, even if abstinence 
involves some self-restraint. The other class are 
inclined to gratify their desires whenever it can 
not be shown that in the individual case such 
action will be harmful. They do not admit use- 
lessness as a reason for abstinence. On account 
of the extreme difficulty of determining in each 
individual case what the effect of an action will 
be, the former class adopt the rule of abstinence, 
and the latter class that of indulgence. 

From our point of view social duty 'and indi- 
vidual self-culture require habits of self-control. 
They demand the elimination, as far as possible, 
of all useless things that are likely to be posi- 
tively injurious, even though in some individual 
cases injury can not be proved. Asceticism 
asserts that the body is evil, and that its mem- 
bers should be mortified for the sake of spiritual 
development. Temperance asserts that the life 
of the body is good if rightly used, but that the 



CONTINENCE IN MARRIA GE. 1 1 3 

licensing of passion destroys the body and de- 
thrones the mind. In behalf of continence we 
urge that the function of sexual union is pro- 
creation, to which pleasure and pain are mere 
incidents. We urge that control of physical 
passion and economy of nervous energy are the 
surest means of securing robust, beautiful, and 
abundant physical life. Continence, therefore, 
is not ascetic, but temperate. It is prudent and 
manly. It does not look toward the purification 
of the soul by the mortification of the body, but 
toward the development of both body and soul 
by the right use of both. Continence lays 
emphasis, not on anarchy, but on responsible 
freedom. Weak yielding to the caprice of pas- 
sion is abject slavery. 

But some people say that continence precludes 
the highest expression of love. They assert that 
it puts the relation of the sexes on a purely busi- 
ness basis, and denies the possibility of spiritual- 
izing material things. **In marriage,'' it is 
said, '* there will come moments when love will 
rise into an ecstasy of self-abandonment, of pas- 
sionate longing to lose one's self in the loved 
object. The thought of self is totally effaced. 
What does nature say at such a moment? It 
demands the tribute of sexual union as the 
natural and inevitable accompaniment of such 
a feeling. You cheat nature at such a moment 
8 



114 ^ THICAL MARRIA GE. 

at your peril. The only way to escape injury 
is never to let love reach such culminating 
moments. But that is what love demands. 
Therefore, better not love. Let the whole thing 
be a matter of cold calculation. ' ' These words 
were used by a man who believed that sexual 
intercourse as the * * tribute ' ' demanded by 
nature at those moments when ' ' love will rise 
into an ecstasy of self-abandonment/' should 
be permitted, even though prudential consid- 
erations might necessitate the use of means 
to prevent conception. He argued that the 
theory of continence would condemn all pleasure 
in sexual union, and said further: ''It is the 
same with eating. You ought not to enjoy your 
food. That is beastly indulgence. Eat solely 
with a view to sustaining life, and eliminate all 
other motives.'* 

All pleadings for irresponsible love are met by 
the stubborn fact that the union of the sexes is 
a social act, normally followed by consequences 
of the most far-reaching importance. The birth 
of an unwelcome child, and his curses in later 
years ought to have a sobering effect even upon 
the ' * ecstasy ' ' of love. The assertion that love 
demands satisfaction at the expense of reason, 
nature, and the welfare of the race, is the piti- 
able excuse of a blind teacher whose religion 
makes him veneer sensual gratification with the 
boast of spiritual development. 



CONTINENCE IN MARRIA GE. 1 1 5 

The remarkable analogy pointed out in the 
words last quoted, between pleasure in sexual 
union and pleasure in eating requires a moment's 
attention. Suppose that we, in our exquisite 
appreciation of the usefulness of eating for the 
encouragement of sociability and community of 
thought, should eat unwholesome or unnecessary 
food which, like the detective's whisky, must 
be carefully diverted into our boots, or which, 
like the delicate viands of the pampered Roman 
banqueters, must, immediately after the feast, 
be removed from the seat of digestion by enforced 
vomiting or by the use of a stomach pump. 
There is no harm in enjoying food, but eating 
merely to gratify taste is gluttony. The prin- 
ciple is the same in either case. Satisfaction 
of desire should not be proportioned to the desire 
itself, but to the need. True, under normal con- 
ditions, and with no pandering to the senses, 
desire tends to be proportionate to the need. 
The reasons for the excess of sensual desire over 
the needs of reproduction have been pointed out. 
Our problem is not to devise means for indulging 
extravagant impulses, but rather to re-establish 
an equilibrium through the atrophy of passion. 

3. Another objection sometimes urged against 
continence is allied to the one just discussed. It 
is said that passion, like hunger, increases if not 



1 1 6 E THICAL MARRIA GE. 

satisfied. On this theory the regular gratifica- 
tion of desire makes a normal, self- controlled life 
easy. The answer to this hypothesis is twofold. 
In the first place, if the sexual impulse were the 
expression of a regularly recurring physical need, 
some physiological means for its satisfaction 
would certainly have been furnished in the 
economy of nature. That sexual intercourse is 
no such means is made clear by the wide differ- 
ences between men and women. For, if the 
man's need recurs regularly, what is to be done 
during the woman's pregnancy and nursing ? In 
the second place, experience goes to show that 
sexual desire is not satisfied by moderate and 
regular indulgence, but knows no limits except 
physical exhaustion or surfeit. Continence is 
easier than so-called ''moderation," simply be- 
cause it draws the line at the logical division 
between functional and f unctionless gratification. 
It is undoubtedly true that constantly stimulated 
passion would cumulate and make life miserable. 
But if we were trying to put out a fire we should 
scarcely think of constantly adding more fuel to 
the flames. The trouble is that most people 
seem to consider passion a fixed and undiminish- 
able force which must be reckoned with perma- 
nently at its present face value. As a matter of 
fact, its stock has been ''watered,'' and if we 



CONTINENCE IN MARRIA QE. 1 1 7 

restore normal conditions, there will be an enor- 
mous shrinkage in its relative value. 

4. Finally, we should notice an objection made 
not so much against the theory as against the 
practical program of continence. It is asserted 
that impregnation is a very uncertain conse- 
quence of copulation. Therefore, it is urged, 
people who desire offspring need to have frequent 
intercourse until procreation is assured. Some 
color of plausibility is given to this contention 
by the facts of everyday life. It is said that on 
the average the first child of a fertile union is 
born about seventeen months after marriage.** 
This would indicate that eight months of fre- 
quent intercourse pass before conception takes 
place, unless, indeed, the shame of having a child 
in the minimum time after marriage induces 
many young people to prevent conception at 
finst. It is a well-knownT fact that prostitutes 
seldom have children; and it seems reasonable to 
suppose that too frequent intercourse may hinder 
impregnation rather than make it more likely.*^ 
One authority, speaking of sexual intercourse, 
says : — 

' ' As a general rule, the act is and ought to be 
repeated but rarely. In newly married people, 
of course, sexual intercourse takes place more 
frequently, and hence it happens that conception 



Il8 ETHICAL MARRIAGE, 

often fails during the first few months of wed- 
lock, when probably the semen of the male 
contains but few perfect spermatozoa, and in 
such cases it is only when the ardor of first love 
is abated, and the spermatozoa have been allowed 
the time requisite for their full development, that 
the female becomes impregnated. ' * *^ 

It is undoubtedly true that the number of 
children born into the world bears an insignificant 
ratio to the number of times sexual intercourse 
takes place. No one would deny that this fact 
is largely due to artificial conditions, some of 
which have been indicated in this chapter. There 
is, however, no particular need to argue the 
point ; for any couple who are well-disposed 
toward the theory of continence can very soon 
find out for themselves whether or not concep- 
tion is easily brought about. The program of 
procreation suggested on a preceding page, if 
put into practice, would no doubt set at rest in 
most cases the uncertainty regarding a woman's 
barrenness. The objection we have been con- 
sidering here gets practically all its force from 
the desire on the part of some conscientious 
young people to find an excuse for the indul- 
gence of their passions immediately after mar- 
riage. Almost everyone tries to shirk some portion 
of responsibility on occasion. But it is unworthy 
of a Christian man to try to find if he can not 



CONTINENCE IN MARRIA GE, 1 1 9 

make some slight concession to his worldly pro- 
pensities without outraging his conscience and 
inviting the wrath of heaven. Rational living is 
not irksome, but full of joy. 

The conscientious devotee of passion seems to 
get a large crumb of comfort from his medical 
authorities who say that conception ought not to 
result from first intercourse. They claim that 
the pain and nervous shock generally experi- 
enced by women on this occasion put them in 
bad condition for immediate pregnancy. This 
theory is brought forward triumphantly as final 
proof that the doctrine of continence is untenable. 
It is absurd not to see that even if we were to 
grant the desirability of first intercourse being 
fruitless, the principle of continence would not 
be at all shaken. For under these conditions 
the first copulation would be a purposive and 
responsible act, having a definite part to play as 
a preliminary and preparatory step in procrea- 
tion. But there is apparently no good reason for 
admitting the necessity of this preliminary act. 

What shocks a woman, and particularly unfits 
her for motherhood, is nothing inherent in the 
change from virginity to wifehood, but rather 
the sudden discovery that she is no longer a free 
woman. Her lover was all deference to her 
wishes and respect for her personality. Her 
husband, when once the keys to her sanctuary 



I20 ETHICAL MARRIAGE, 

are in his hand, is transformed by some perverse 
alchemy into a sensual tyrant. He may use vio- 
lence, he may use only the persuasions of the 
benevolent despot; but her freedom is gone. 
Another reason for the shock experienced by 
women on the wedding night is the sudden 
change in the degree of physical intimacy. 
Until men and women have become used to each 
other's bodies, and can look upon each other 
without vShame,'they have no right to violate each 
other in the sexual embrace. It may be that 
under the bCvSt conditions conception will fail to 
result from the first intercourse. If so, that is 
nature's business, and she hardly needs the vol- 
untary assistance of pleasure-seeking men. 



CHAPTER XII. 

PRACTICABII.ITY OF CONTINENCE. 

IT has been our purpose in preceding chapters 
to show that, from the social standpoint, mar- 
riage and reproduction are a duty resting upon 
the well-equipped members of society, and fur- 
thermore that children ought to be born as the 
result of definite purpose and preparation. A 
brief consideration of the physical laws of repro- 
duction shows that these duties can not be ful- 
filled except in connection with the control of 
sexual passion and the strict limitation of sexual 
intercourse within the marriage bond. It seems 
clear that continence, save for procreation, would 
be immediately accepted as the natural and fit 
rule of life for the fulfillment of social obligations 
by unbiased men and women. It is only because 
this rule of Hfe runs counter to strong natural 
and cultivated passions common in some degree 
to all men that objections of all kinds are raised 
against continence, and people seem determined 
to find some other way out of the difficulty, if 
possible. 

A ' ' theory ' ' is not a good theory unless it will 
work. An '* ideal'' is not an ideal unless it can 

121 



122 ETHICAL MARRIAGE. 

be realized. A '* duty '* is a fraud unless it can 
be fulfilled. Integrity is the supreme attribute 
of character. It is absurd for anyone to speak 
of chastity as ''ideal," and to express the hope 
''that in future generations virtue and purity 
will be so innate ' * as to make continence in 
marriage possible, unless we proceed at once to 
take steps to make virtue and purity innate in 
future generations by practicing them in this 
generation. The future is the child of the pres- 
ent, and there is absolutely no reason to expect 
it to be better than the present unless we help to 
make it so. What we wish to emphasize is that 
the ethical obligations of marriage are binding 
now. Continence is not ideal unless it is prac- 
ticable. 

In view of the almost universal habits of man- 
kind, it would be folly to deny that there are 
certain grave difficulties in the way of the regen- 
eration of marriage along the lines here advo- 
cated. Most of these difiiculties disappear with 
the frank acceptance of continence as a working 
ideal. Physical laws point out the function of 
sexual union. Duty to one*s self and to society 
furnishes the sanction for obedience to these 
laws. Knowledge of what is functional and 
what is demoralizing in physical activity will not 
promote the practice of virtue unless men are 
ethically sound. The question of continence is, 



PRACTICABILITY OF CONTINENCE, 1 23 

therefore, both physiological and ethical. The 
first requisite for the continent life is the will to 
obey nature's laws cheerfully/^ Sulking and 
rebellion inevitably make the task more difl&cult. 
The man who goes as near the ' ' ragged edge ' * of 
crime as he can, and still keep out of the clutches 
of the law, is a despicable citizen. The man 
who reaches for every bit of indulgence that he 
can get without actually bringing nature's heavy 
hand down upon him, is incapable of free action. 

The writer knows from personal experience 
that continence in marriage is practicable, that 
it does not necessitate a constant struggle with 
passion, and that it does not cause coldness in 
Feeling or scantiness in the expression of affec- 
tion between husband and wife. It is not to be 
supposed that continence is made practicable by 
sheer force of will, but rather that the desire to 
be continent is more than half the battle. Yet 
sexual passion is strong enough, even in the 
best of men, so that precautions to render its 
control easy are not to be despised. 

The most efl&cient aid to continence is, of 
course, adequate instruction during childhood 
received in time to prevent the development of 
abnormal sexual habits or morbid curiosity. 
The cultivation of frank friendships with persons 
of the opposite sex during youth, followed in the 
days of courtship by freedom of discussion in 



124 ETHICAL MARRIAGE, 

regard to sexual matters, tends to foster the 
spirit of comradeship between young people, 
which is altogether opposed to unclean thoughts 
and unclean lives. Ivater, the marriage cere- 
mony should make no more immediate difference 
in their lives than the taking of a roommate 
does to a student. The next day after the cere- 
mony they should go to their work as though 
nothing had happened. The ' ' wedding trip ' ' 
would in most cases be a temptation to the 
indulgence of passion. Indeed, it is hard to see 
just what the wedding trip is for unless it is to 
remove the newly married couple from the vexa- 
tions and responsibilities of familiar associations 
and daily duties in order that they may be freer 
to indulge in the pleasures for which the mar- 
riage ceremony is generally considered to be a 
license. Married people ought to go on pleasure 
trips, of course, just as other people do, but if 
they desire to control their passions they ought 
to be busy during the first weeks of married life 
until they have gradually become used to more 
intimate physical associations. 

It is sometimes urged that married people 
should occupy separate beds or sleeping apart- 
ments. This practice would undoubtedly be of 
great help to those who attempt to be ' * moder- 
ate ' * in their sexual indulgences. For continent 
people the question of separate beds should be 



PRACTICABILITY OF CONTINENCE, 1 25 

determined primarily on hygienic grounds and on 
considerations of convenience. It is probably 
somewhat better for the health of any two people 
to sleep apart, regardless of age or sex. On the 
other hand, a married couple whose opportunities 
for intimate association are limited, would often 
find in the occupation of the same sleeping apart- 
ment opportunities for homelike talks, and ca- 
resses not at all inconsistent with or dangerous 
to continence. 

The habits of life which develop the most 
vigorous and healthiest manhood and woman- 
hood render the control of passion easy. For 
this reason a simple diet, plenty of exercise, ab- 
stinence from stimulants, and the avoidance of 
exposure and overwork are all directly conducive 
to the continent life. Indulgence, irregularity, 
or excess in one direction tends to cause it in 
another. 

Finally, those who would be continent must 
train themselves to look upon all the functions of 
sex as normal and not needing the constant inter- 
ference of medical practitioners. Many physicians, 
yielding to the demands of the ailing public, are 
principally engaged in that most ardently pur- 
sued of all sciences, namely, the science of elud- 
ing penalties. Too often it is the doctor's busi- 
ness to palliate rather than to prevent suflfering, 
to commute the penalties of his patients' sins. 



126 ETHICAL MARRIAGE. 

To relieve suffering, however caused, is thought 
to be his undoubted duty. Rendered distrustful 
by his knowledge of the secret sins of men, the 
physician often becomes pessimistic, regards 
ideals as impracticable, and falls a victim to the 
prejudices of his patients. For this and other 
reasons *' medical advice '' is often worthless and 
sometimes dangerous. It is best to seek profes- 
sional advice in regard to sexual matters from 
known and trusted physicians only. A little 
knowledge of the laws of life, the disposition 
to obey loyally the precepts of nature, and the 
capacity to '*put two and two together,'' are 
enough for the ordinary guidance of those who 
control their passions. 



CHAPTER XIII. 

MARRIAGE FOR COMPANIONSHIP. 

FROM the point of view of the state there is 
no marriage which does not contemplate the 
physical union of the sexes and possible procrea- 
tion; for the chief purpose of marriage as a polit- 
ical institution is the renewal of the race. We 
have seen, however, that a careful consideration 
of the purpose of reproduction would exclude 
many persons from participation in this function 
on the ground of unfitness for it. It may be 
reasonably asked. What is to be done to make 
the lives of these excluded persons fruitful and 
happy ? 

While from the social standpoint, reproduction 
is the central function of the family, from the 
individual standpoint other important functions 
are fulfilled in the home. The chief of these is 
the comradeship of men and women, which softens 
the hard lines of life, gives balance to character, 
and all in all tends to make life more worth liv-' 
ing in this world. On the basis of continence in 
marriage, there is no reason why men and women 
who are unfitted for parenthood, should not 
spend their lives together in homes. They may 

127 



128 ETHICAL MAkRlAGK, 

even adopt children, and thus enjoy all the bless- 
ings of family life with the single exception of 
sexual union and procreation. An old man or 
woman without a child is a dying limb on the tree 
of life. The privilege of marriage for companion- 
ship coupled with the adoption of children would 
very greatly ameliorate the condition of persons 
whom social duty condemns to childlessness. 

Physiologically speaking, marriage always in- 
cludes sexual union. Those who wish to spend 
their lives together in comradeship would not, 
therefore, from the standpoint of physiology or 
abstract ethics, need to have the marriage cere- 
mony performed. Under conditions as they now 
exist, however, it is practically necessary for a 
man and a woman who v/ish to live together in 
intimate companionship to be '' married." *^ In 
any case, if children were to be adopted the state 
would have to enforce the permanence of the 
association in family life. 

Two courses are open to those who are unfitted 
for parenthood, but who desire intimate compan- 
ionship. They may decline to enter into the 
marriage contract, and may satisfy themselves 
with the intimate association permitted to friends 
by the public opinion of the community in which 
they live; or, they may enter into the marriage 
contract and enforce upon themselves the law of 
continence. 



MARRIAGE FOR COMPANIONSHIP, T29 

Thus it appears that continence as the rule of 
married life would make it possible to obey both 
the commands and the prohibitions imposed by- 
social duty. It would permit the fittest to pro- 
create under conditions that would insure the 
progressive development of the race. It would 
open the doors of the home to those unfortunate 
persons who, often through no fault of their 
own, are rightly to be excluded from the privi- 
lege of parenthood. The home, which is gener- 
ally founded with little idea of its social function, 
would be recognized at once as the primary unit 
of political life, serving society as the most im- 
portant and altogether necessary means for the 
development of individual culture and social 
character. 



IV 

THE I.INKS OF I,IFE. 

* * A woman when she is in travail hath sorrow ^ 
because her hour is come: but when she is delivered 
of the child ^ she remembereth no more the anguish ^ 
for joy that a man is born into the world, ^^ — fesuSy 
infohn i6 : 21. 



131 



CHAPTER XIV. 

FATHERHOOD. 

ONE of the most telling objections to conti- 
nence that is likely to be urged is the 
socalled ' ^ hardships ' * to man involved in such 
a course. We have already shown that the 
strength of man's sexual passions and the conse- 
quent difficulty of restraining them are the result 
of careless or deliberate stimulation more than 
of natural conditions. The abandonment of the 
habits which cultivate passion would make con- 
trol easy, and would involve a general bracing-up 
in personal conduct. We are, therefore, prepared 
to assert that continence brings its own reward 
in the general superiority of a well-balanced, 
functioning life to a life of unrestraint. 

But there are other and more direct benefits to 
be expected. In the first place, fathers would 
be immune from the sexual diseases and ex- 
hausted vitality which curse so many incontinent 
men. The procreation of a child involves almost 
no physical drain upon the man's energies. The 
whole work of nourishing and caring for the un- 
born babe falls directly to the lot of the mother. 
If the father's energies were not drained by the 

133 



134 ETHICAL MARRIAGE, 

gratification of his passion, this wasted force 
would be left for use in providing for the sup- 
port of the mother and in preparing for the edu- 
cation of the child. 

Secondly, with continence put into practice, a 
large item of expense would be saved which now 
goes to pay doctors, druggists, nurses, and serv- 
ants, as a consequence of the sicknesses of the 
wife and the child brought on by nothing but 
marital lust. This would be no inconsiderable 
gain to the man whose income has to be eked out 
by the utmost economy. The money thus saved, 
if spent for books, art, music, or other means of 
home culture, could not fail to make many an 
ugly fireside cheerful and beautiful. 

Thirdly, and more important than the mere 
avoidance of physical pain and the economy of 
money, come the love and respect of a free 
woman. In spite of the independence and sel- 
fishness of men, there is nothing that means so 
much to them as the gentle companionship and 
loving confidence of womankind. Women are 
not the only sufferers in marriage. In many and 
many a home the husband finds a peevish invalid 
or a worn-out drudge or an idle spendthrift to 
welcome his daily return to the domestic hearth. 
Continence, with the recognition of the true place 
of home life in the life of the world, would 
in most cases change all this. The honeymoon 



FATHERHOOD. 135 

would not be the few weeks succeeding marriage, 
now generally wasted in fruitless pleasure-seeking, 
but would extend through the long years of mar- 
ried life which gradually unfold the meaning of 
love in the supreme co-operation of the family. 

Fourthly, fatherhood would mean the confi- 
dence and affection of healthy, happy children. 
Some of the bitterest tragedies of life arise from 
filial ingratitude. Children born of accident and 
endowed with an inheritance of disease or evil 
passions, curse the fathers by whom they were 
begotten. And as the hatred of sons and daugh- 
ters is the most humiliating penalty of parental 
selfishness, so their trust and inalienable affection 
are the most satisfying reward of responsible 
fatherhood. No man need fear the ingratitude 
of well-bom and well-homed children. 

Fifthly, continence would tend to free men 
from the domination of passion. **He that 
ruleth his spirit is greater than he that taketh a 
city. ' * The great majority of men live in misera- 
ble slavery to one or more bad habits. The de- 
sire of sex is acknowledged to be the most power- 
ful instinct that leads men into vice. Every evil 
habit and every uncontrolled passion is an incubus 
upon a man, taking away his self-respect and 
lessening his capacity for appreciating good and 
beautiful things. A temperate life such as con- 
tinence implies would free him from his petty 



136 ETHICAL MARRIAGE, 

masters, and make him once more the *' upward- 
looker.'^*' 

Finally, the highest reward of faithful father- 
hood is the consciousness of participation in the 
work of race development. To see in one's 
child a living embodiment of one's own best life, 
a work of art that transcends all the monuments 
of wealth and genius, a link in the unending 
golden chain that leads on from the crude present 
to the ideal future, a life that embodies one's own 
immortality and unites one with the work and 
destinies of the world, — such is the vision of 
ideal fatherhood.^^ 



CHAPTER XV. 

MOTHERHOOD. 

THE immunities and opportunities that con- 
tinence and purposeful procreation would 
bring to motherhood are numerous and impor- 
tant. Standing out first and foremost, visible 
even to the blind, is the relief of woman from 
the diseases ''peculiar" to her sex. These ills 
are caused chiefly by unregulated sexual inter- 
course and by carelessness with reference to her 
sex nature. The first cause would be removed 
by continence, the second by the sense of respon- 
sibility in motherhood. Woman would be free 
from the taxes of lust, from most of her sickness 
during pregnancy and in child-bed, from the 
dangers of abortion, from the burdens of unwel- 
come child-bearing and child-care, from prema- 
ture age. By means of better knowledge and a 
higher sense of her social responsibility she 
would be able to avoid the suffering so often 
caused by overwork or exposure when she needs 
rest and warmth. 

A second great immunity would come to 
woman in her enfranchisement in the home. In 
a continent marriage she would retain the same 

137 



138 ETHICAL MARRIAGE, 

control over her body that she had in her girl- 
hood, and would escape that bitter sense of deg- 
radation and humiliation "which is the result of 
prostitution in marriage and out of it. Mar- 
riage would no longer be to her the bartering of 
her freedom for a ' ' mess of pottage. ' ' It is said 
that many wives are afraid to caress their hus- 
bands because of the likelihood of exciting pas- 
sions for the gratification of which they would 
have to submit their bodies as a vicarious offer- 
ing. Woman's patient love is often requited 
with brutality or unfaithfulness. Continence 
would remedy this, and would remove the chief 
cause of a woman's jealousy; for it is the knowl- 
edge of her husband's sensuality in his relations 
with herself that gives a wife ground for suspect- 
ing his infidelity. 

Another benefit to woman arising from the 
purification of the marriage bond would be a 
much greater freedom in dress. With the elimi- 
nation of shame a woman would be able to adopt 
a style of clothing suited to her work; and, cer- 
tainly within the home, she would be free to rid 
herself of the impedimenta which largely increase 
the difiiculties of housework. A woman does 
not know what freedom of movement is until 
she has tried physical exercise without corset or 
skirts in a gymnasium or elsewhere. ^^ The ex- 
treme conservatism exhibited by most women with 



MOTHERHOOD. 139 

reference to dress reform, though partly to be 
accounted for on the score of a mania for being 
in style, is principally due to delicacy resulting 
from the sense of shame, and the prurient curi- 
osity of men. The adoption of so mild a reform 
as the wearing of short skirts in stormy weather 
and the shortening of skirts at all times so that 
they will not sweep up dust and filth, would add 
much to wom'an's comfort, and would be an im- 
portant sanitar}^ measure for mother and children 
at home. 

The more vigorous health resulting from free- 
dom in dress and delivery from sexual slavery, 
would bring much wider opportunities to women 
in all the activities of life. The wife would be 
no longer confined to her home the greater part 
of the time by sheer physical^inability to main- 
tain outside interests of her own. Woman would 
find her position in society immeasurably exalted 
if she were no longer looked upon as created 
principally to serve the pleasure of man. Un- 
married women have already attained a position 
of considerable independence, though still ham- 
pered by unequal conditions in the struggle for 
self-support. But under the new rule of mar- 
riage the wife and mother would be honored 
above other women, and her freedom would be 
limited only by the limitations of her self- 
chosen work, — the work of home-making. No 



140 ETHICAL MARRIAGE, 

matter how free woman may be made, the in- 
stincts of nature and the needs of society will 
still lead her to motherhood as her most impor- 
tant and best-loved work. 

Much is said about the sacredness of the 
relation between mother and child. Unwel- 
come children are not always deluded by this 
poetic ideal, realized in some cases, to be sure, 
but often seen as a cruel mockery. Motherhood 
is not sacred if it results from prostitution; but 
with continence and responsibility, it rises into a 
divine function. The crown of motherhood, 
often selfishly and unworthily sought, and often 
shunned as a ^ ' crown of thorns, ' ' is nevertheless 
a diadem of light when it adorns the brow of a 
real queen/^ 

In purposeful motherhood, woman will find a 
new ideal of love. The selfish elements of her 
affection will be eliminated by the sense of social 
responsibility. The passion that now overwhelms 
her fancy and makes the happiness and useful- 
ness of her life depend upon the requiting love of 
some hero of her girlhood, will be softened and 
deepened into the steadfast purpose to make her- 
self worthy of the noblest companionship, and to 
respect the call of duty more than the capricious 
inclinations of youth. I^ove will cease to be to 
woman the possession of an object upon which 
she may lavish her devotion without stint. Her 



MOTHERHOOD. I41 

horizon will no longer be limited to her lover's 
personality, her child will no longer be a pet 
to be kept in babyhood as long as possible and 
clung to with frantic insistence when the time 
comes for him to assume the duties of mature 
life on his own account. lyove will be a work, 
rather than an enjoyment. The mother will see 
in her duties in the home the great functions of 
protecting, nourishing, and developing the young 
life destined to make the humanity of the next 
generation more generous and mighty than the 
humanity of this. She will find in her work 
the best guarantee of future happiness and integ- 
rity; namely, the service that makes life worth 
living now, — a joyful,^ thing, a thing of beauty 
and cultured association, — for man and child as 
well as for herself. 

' * I saw a woman sleeping. In her sleep she 
dreamt I^ife stood before her and held in each 
hand a gift — in the one I^ove, in the other Free- 
dom. And she said to the woman, * Choose. ' 

'* And the woman waited long; and she said, 
* Freedom! ' 

'' And lyife said, *Thou hast well chosen. If 
thou hadst said, * ' I^ove, ' ' I would have given 
thee that thou didst ask for; and I would have 
gone from thee and returned to thee no more. 
Now, the day will come when I shall return. 
In that day I shall bear both gifts in one hand, ' ''^^ 



CHAPTER XVI. 

CHILDHOOD. 

ONE of the corollaries of the proposition that 
reproduction is a social :duty , is the obliga- 
tion to bring children into the world only under 
conditions favorable to their future usefulness. 
Continence would be a most important factor in 
giving a good birth to children. There is a 
popular .notion that all the influences operating 
on a child before birth are hereditary, and there- 
fore not subject to the voluntary control of 
parents. As a matter of fact, the direct influ- 
ences of environment begin with the conception 
of the child in the mother's womb, and parents 
are not less but rather more responsible for pre- 
natal than for postnatal influences. 

Whether or not the child is to be well-born 
depends upon the nutrition and nervous condi- 
tion of the mother during pregnancy, as well as 
upon the clean virility of the father at the time 
of impregnation. A condition of nerves and 
nourishment fit for reproduction can not be con- 
jured up by the mother in a week or a month by 
a little care with reference to diet, exercise, and 
mental application. The history of our whole 
142 



CHILDHOOD. t43 

lives is written in our flesh and blood to-day. 
The well-being of a child is affected by the whole 
past lives of the parents, and much that is ac- 
credited to the influence of heredity is but the 
effect of an environment which has been built up 
through the long years of preparation for parent- 
hood, and which can not be reconstructed by an 
awakened conscience immediately preceding the 
begetting of children. It is, therefore, clear that 
the cherishing of pure ideals and the strict con- 
trol of passion at all times as well as during 
pregnancy will contribute immeasurably to the 
welfare of the child. The puny, crying babies 
that come into our homes, cursed and to curse, 
would either not be conceived or would be born 
with healthy bodies and sound nervous organi- 
zations. 

To be well-born includes the two elements, 
health and welcome. To be well-born! How 
indefeasible a right! How rare an opportunity! 
To feel no more that the past has cursed us, and 
that in order to grow we must amputate it! To 
know that we are the children of love and pur- 
pose, and that our bodies contain the best blood 
and the steadiest nerves that healthy parents 
could give us! To see that our work is one with 
the work of the past generation, that the founda- 
tion is already laid, that we do not need to clear 
away the rubbish of some old tottering temple of 



144 ETHICAL MARRIAGE, 

life and begin painfully and slowly at the lowest 
foundations to build a new mansion worthy of 
the soul I To be able to love our fathers and 
mothers through knowledge rather than through 
ignorance! O what joy in a welcome, well- 
fathered, well-mothered babe ! ^* 

But the child needs more than to be well-born. 
He needs to be well-bred. Good breeding is not 
chiefly training in elegant speech and manners, 
though these are not to be despised; but pri- 
marily it consists in the capacity to appreciate 
social interests. Courtesy is self-respecting kind- 
ness directed by intelligence. 

Up to the time of birth nutrition is the chief 
demand of the child. But soon afterward the 
taming of selfish instincts in the struggle for life 
and the development of intelligence and altruis- 
tic tendencies must begin. For this work the 
first requisite is a good home. Even under 
existing conditions, with marriage steeped in 
sensuality, with many families stricken with 
sickness and poverty, with child-life often ren- 
dered miserable by the quarrels and the tyranny 
of parents, the home is still about all that a child 
has for protection and the opportunities for de- 
velopment. There are some homes in which 
children have been reared in freedom and happi- 
ness, and to which grown-up sons and daughters 
look back with reverence and love. And it is 



CHILDHOOD, 145 

Hot easy to conceive how beautiful and how dear 
an ideal home would be to the children born and 
reared in it. 

At home the child gets sleep and food with all 
the intense experiences connected with them. 
At home the child is clothed, and home is 
the center of all that world of sentiment which 
attaches to dress, from the shame of nakedness 
to the pride of ornament. Here the child re- 
ceives its care, first during the helplessness of 
infancy, then in times of sickness or accident or 
distress of mind. Here the child learns to walk 
and to talk, and is initiated into the realm of 
knowledge. Here the baby girl gets her first 
dolly and the baby boy his first hobby-horse. 
At home the sense of duty is born, and the ideals 
of conduct are matured. Religion and morality, 
confidence and love, are interpreted to the child 
through his home. 

Much has been said about the possibility of 
molding human character during the first few 
years of childhood ; but we sometimes overlook 
the importance of a home that watches over its 
children till the end of their immaturity. The 
superiority of man over the beasts has been 
shown to be in large measure due to his longer 
period of infancy.^^ May we not believe that 
a home which extends its beneficent influence 
over the lives of its children past the first period 



146 ETHICAL MARRIAGE. 

of youth and well into the period when rational 
ideals can be fully grasped, will be able to usher 
in a higher humanity than the world has yet 
seen? 

We need hardly say that the degree in which 
the home fulfills its opportunities and answers 
its responsibilities is dependent upon the intelli- 
gence, harmonious co-operation, and loyalty to 
duty of the home-makers. All the benefits ac- 
cruing to fathers and mothers from adherence to 
the ideals of ethical marriage would be enjoyed 
with increase by their children. The rule of life 
that would simplify diet, promote cleanliness, 
and prevent waste of physical energy in the par- 
ents would insure better care and less temptation 
to evil habits in the children. In the matter of 
food alone intelligent care during childhood 
would prevent habits of gluttony and extrava- 
gance which take away so much of the genuine 
pleasure and efficiency of life in numberless 
cases. Bread and butter with an abundance of 
play give children more pleasure than do cake 
and candy with stomach-ache and stupidity. 

Parents are too apt to look at childhood as a 
fact that exists for their own comfort or annoy- 
ance. If the former, they treat their children as 
playthings, and try to keep them in babyhood and 
* * innocence ' ' as long as possible. If the latter 
is true, as it often is with unwelcome children, 



CHILDHOOD. 147 

the parents regard their boys and girls as neces- 
sary burdens which must be endured in some 
way or other until they are big enough to shift 
for themselves, or to contribute by their labor to 
the family income. In one case the child is con- 
sidered pure and beautiful, the ideal of human 
perfection, destined to be tarnished and to be- 
come a sort of fallen angel as it grows into 
manhood or womanhood. It is a doctrine of 
current pessimism that this fall is inevitable, 
that a man's life begins as a success and ends as 
a failure. From the other point of view the 
question of purity is not involved, and the child 
is considered simply a useless creature to be hur- 
ried into usefulness with all possible celerity. 

Both of these views are irresponsible, the 
result of selfish marriages, in which the social 
good has been subordinated to personal conven- 
ience. In reality the child's life exists for itself 
and for its completion in maturity. A child 
should be neither a plaything nor a drudge. In 
a good home the parents will make the child's 
present happiness and future welfare the two- 
fold determining motive in their parental care. 
If we are to make any discrimination among the 
periods of life, we must give higher value to the 
trained and purposeful activities of mature man- 
hood and womanhood than to the innocent 
prattle and hilarious play of childhood; and, 



1 48 ETHICAL MARRIAGE, 

therefore, where the child's future welfare is in 
conflict with his present desire, the latter should 
always be brought into subordination. But 
within the necessary limits of development and 
of growth in self-control, the best preparation 
for a useful life is a free, glad childhood. 

Of the more specific benefits that would come 
to the child as a result of pure ideals in family 
life, the most important is protection from the 
vices of youth. As already pointed out, the 
sense of shame and a belief in the all but inevita- 
ble sensuality of sex life prevent most parents 
who have regard for current ideals of social 
ethics from carefully teaching their children the 
meaning of sex relations and the functions of the 
"organs of sex. In many cases, doubtless, this 
failure is due to sheer ignorance on the part of 
parents, who were themselves left to pick up 
what knowledge they could without instruction, 
and, by reason of faulty ideals, quack literature, 
and orthodox doctors, have had little or no expe- 
rience in anything but the pathology of sex. 
The direct result of ignorance and shame is self- 
abuse, the characteristic vice of youth. Chil- 
dren's questions are not answered in good faith. 
They are often told that ' ' God sends the babies. ' ' 
This explanation of their origin is in many cases 
a pitiable black lie, calculated to hide from them 
for a time the knowledge of their real origin. ^^ 



CHILDHOOD. 149 

Some excellent people are of the opinion that 
the facts of sex life can not be safely imparted 
to young children. The fact is, the ideals, 
the consciousness, and the functions of sex 
occupy so conspicuous a place in the life of 
every community, that all knowledge of these 
things can not long be kept from any one. The 
ever-recurring phenomena of birth, marriage, 
and death can not but lead children to make 
inquiries, honest answers to which involve a full 
explanation of sex. The common argument that 
there is no reason for instructing children in sex 
matters until they have reached the stage in 
their physical development when the sexual life 
is ready to function, although seemingly plausi- 
ble, is met, first, by the practical necessity for 
forestalHng the evil effects of vicious information; 
and, secondly, by the fact that all the relations of 
life are vitally connected with sex, and the bodies 
of children are being prepared or unfitted for the 
functions of mature life long before puberty. 
The real difficulty is in the sense of shame, and 
parents who fear the effects of knowledge upon 
children will speedily lose their fears if they 
eliminate all grossness and consciousness of sen- 
suality from their own lives. In the ideal home, 
uncleanness in word, thought, or action would 
be the only acknowledged reason for shame. 
Children would be brought up to know them- 



i50 ETItlCAL MARRIAGE. 

selves and each other, and the prurient curiosity 
to see the human form and understand the func- 
tions of the human body would be forestalled 
by knowledge naturally acquired or responsibly 
given. And perhaps the most powerful of all 
the forces going to make child-life pure and to 
redeem youth from its destroying vices would be 
the substitution of continence for self-indulgence 
as the current ideal of married life. 

The greatest of all the benefits coming from the 
acceptance of ethical ideals in marriage would be 
the child's training in the freedom and responsi- 
bility that are required to fit him for participation 
in the work of the world. Along with the sense 
of responsibility for his own health and for the 
right use of his physical energies would come 
the seUvSe of wider responsibility for the fulfill- 
ment of his parents* social ideals. Youths and 
maidens would feel that it is incumbent upon 
them to be better than their fathers and mothers 
in proportion as their opportunities are greater, 
and to hand down to the future still better oppor- 
tunities and still higher ideals. ' ' Children ought 
to be free to grow away from the ideas of their 
parents,'* but only by growing into more living 
thought. 

An ideal, a compelling idea ! It is the rudder 
without v/hich freedom drifts into anarchy. An 
ideal enforces the highest and truest responsibil- 



CHILDHOOD. 151 

ity. We can not set bounds to the possibilities 
of development in a home that lets its children 
grow, and suggests to them an ideal. With the 
elimination of lust from the marriage relation 
and the birth of a purpose in procreation, what 
may we not expect of our children and their 
children? '*The gods must walk the earth 
again/' ^^ 



CHAPTER XVII. 

fri:endship. 

FRIENDSHIP, although the word is gener- 
ally used lightly and meanly enough, stands 
for a high ideal of human relationships in the 
minds of those who have felt its need. It means 
the association of lives on the ideal side, — mutual 
encouragement in the realization of noble and 
beautiful purposes. Friendship is the relation- 
ship existing between two persons who esteem 
each other so much that frank sincerity seems 
worth while. 

Friendship often exists without reference to 
sex, but we are here chiefly concerned with it as 
a manifestation of the natural sympathy which 
exists between boys and girls, and men and 
women. ^^ Already we have asserted that true 
love, looking to marriage, must have its founda- 
tions in friendship. The separation of the sexes 
in childhood and youth when they are separated,^ 
and the unnatural and arbitrary relations exist- 
ing between them when they are not, are quite 
plainly the result of a current belief in the impu- 
rity of sexual relationships. The guardians of 
respectability aim to stave off, by one device qv 
'5^ 



FRIENDSHIP. 153 

another, the immoral union of the sexes until it 
can be hidden under the cloak of holy matri- 
mony. It can hardly be denied that if the dan- 
gers of frivolity and its twin sister, sensuality, 
were overcome, boys and girls would be greatly 
benefited by freedom of association. The lack 
of frank friendships in earlier years prepares 
young men and women for the follies of love and 
the tragedies of marriage. Babies associate quite 
freely without respect to sex, but verj soon 
shame enters like a wedge to separate the boys 
and girls more and more during puberty and 
adolescence, until at the age of twenty or twenty- 
five they fly into each other's arms in the bond 
of marriage. False education makes the rela- 
tions of youths and maidens both silly and insin- 
cere. The simple fact of the monthly sickness, 
which ought to be as well understood and as 
easily referred to as the headache or a cut finger, 
is so deeply hidden under the cloak of conven- 
tional silence that girls would rather tell a lie 
or rashly expose their health than give the true 
reason why they wish to decline a social invita- 
tion. Young people, even more than children, 
need each other's companionship. It is in the 
bright days of youth that the foundations must 
be laid for community of ideals. 

Society is suspicious of friendships between 
the sexes. It is fancied that sooner pr later any 



154 ETHICAL MARRIAGE, 

agreeable companionship will be smitten by the 
wand of love, and that the freedom and under- 
standing of the former relation will be replaced 
by the constraint and the feverish mystery of a 
relation whose full meaning is hidden from the 
pair of lovers. lyove, meaning the desire to co- 
operate in marriage, is a natural, though not an 
inevitable, outgrowth of friendship between the 
sexes. But '* falling in love'* is ordinarily the 
result of unnatural conditions. We can readily 
see how a youth and a maiden, normally envi- 
roned, may grow to love each other. But this 
insanity of passion, — whence comes it? A pure 
ideal of marriage would unshackle friendship 
and banish the blind, furious god of love from 
the human pantheon. Hearts are not broken by 
the refusals of friendship. The bitter disap- 
pointments of love are the fruit of deception, 
cruelty, or misunderstanding. 

Perhaps even more than the unmarried, the 
married need freedom of friendship. Marriage 
is not a passive state, but an active co-operation; 
and the moment that effort is relaxed, the work 
of the home begins to fall behind. Married life 
is no asylum for invalids. It is no palace car, in 
which, if we have paid due regard to the pro- 
prieties of the way station where the clergymen 
punch the tickets, we need only lounge about in 
luxury while the mighty engine of love pulls us 



PRIENDSHIP. 155 

across the wilderness of life. There is a ten- 
dency on the part of young people to regard one 
of their number who is fortunate enough to get 
married as in some way '' lost.*' It is perhaps 
the same feeling that may be noticed among the 
members of a graduating class toward one of 
their number who first secures a position. He is 
' * lost ' * to them — that is, he is removed from 
their circle of interest and expectancy — and at 
the same time ' ' provided for. ' ' But many a 
young teacher has discovered that getting a 
position is not half so hard as filling it. It is 
the same with our lost friends who are safely 
married and bundled off on the journey of life: 
they are not removed from us; their larger 
tasks still lie before them, and their need of 
sympathy and counsel is unceasing. 

It is the orthodox doctrine of marriage, under 
the present regime of romance, that lovers and 
married people should find in each other the 
sufficient satisfaction of every legitimate want. 
It is supposed that, once a life-alliance has been 
made, the legitimate function of friendship is 
fulfilled, and that straightway correspondences 
must be closed out and personal relationships 
broken off in order that love and duty may be 
concentrated in the home. Friendships may, 
perhaps, be outgrown by a divergence in inter- 
ests and ideals ; but the mere fact of betrothal or 



156 ETHICAL MARRIAGE. 

marriage furnishes the most absurd of reasons 
for cutting any vital cord of sympathy or 
co-operation that may exist between any two 
persons in the world. Who believes that mar- 
riage will thrive on isolation? that a woman 
will be a better wife and mother if she enters 
into the soul life of only one man ? that a man 
will be a better husband and father if he cher- 
ishes the sympathy of only one woman ? True, 
the home calls for specialization of effort and 
care ; but every specialization brings with it 
more and more dependence on outside relation- 
ships. The household life will be self-consuming 
if it is not fed by wider association. Every 
friendship of husband or wife will add riches to 
the home store. 

Friendships are the spiritual doors and win- 
dows of the home through which the universal 
light and air find entrance. In a healthy and 
growing home nothing can be found better for 
the children than the loyal and intimate friend- 
ships which their parents have cherished from 
early life. Fathers and mothers who still have 
friends can understand much better the social 
interests of youth. The removal of the princi- 
pal source of conjugal jealousy would leave the 
way open for friendship to contribute its princely 
gifts to the enrichment of the home and the 
culture of humanity. 



FRIENDSHIP. 157 

Freedom of friendship would involve the hon- 
esty now so generally absent in the relations of 
the sexes. The communications of young peo- 
ple in reference to each other are usually uncrit- 
ical, being either meaningless compliments, ill- 
disguised flattery, or impatient reproaches. 
How many of our disagreeable ways grow into 
deeply-rooted habits because we have had no 
friend sincere enough to point out to us our 
faults! Many of the blemishes of character, 
especially those more or less peculiar to one or 
the other sex, can be most easily seen and most 
wisely criticized by persons of the opposite sex. 
Thus we find a new direction in which the re- 
generation of marriage would transform the con- 
ditions of life and enable the individual to reap 
the full benefit of association. 

Freedom implies responsibility, and the rela- 
tions of friendship are as much subject to the 
laws of duty as is marriage itself. * ' The laws 
of friendship are great, austere, and eternal — of 
one web with the laws of nature and of morals. 
But we have aimed at a swift and petty benefit, 
to suck a sudden sweetness. We snatch at the 
slowest fruit in the whole garden of God, which 
many summers and many winters must ripen. 
We seek our friend not sacredly but with an 
adulterate passion which would appropriate him 
to oursdves," ^^ 



V. 

SOCIAL COROIvLARIES. 

* * Though the men and their possessions are to 
be increased at the same time^ the first object of 
thought is always to be the multiplication of a 
worthy people, . . . When the men are true and 
good, and stand shoulder to shoulder, the strength 
of a7iy nation is in its quantity of life, not in its 
land nor gold y — fohn Ruskin, in The Queen of 
the Air. 



159 



CHAPTER XVIII. 

THE FAMIIvY. 

THE world is filled with the clamor of re- 
form. Current social opinion is saturated 
with moral pessimism. The cry of denunciation 
is raised against the corruption of politics, the 
unscrupulous selfishness of business, the hypoc- 
risy of religion, the degeneracy of morals, and 
the iconoclasm of the multitude. * ' Yellow jour- 
nalism '' is only one of the signs that, in spite of 
our devotion to accurate science, and in spite of 
our facilities for quick communication and thor- 
ough investigation, irresponsible lying was per- 
haps never more in vogue than now. A man 
can slander his fellows with practical impunity 
because the conditions of modern life are such 
that relations are coming to be impersonal, and 
one who is disposed to speak evil of his neigh- 
bors is not confronted by the unpleasant neces- 
sity of meeting them face to face in social and 
industrial transactions. His business success in 
many cases does not depend at all upon their 
good win. Life in great cities is destroying 
neighborhood unity. The ubiquity of street 
cars and bicycles makes it possible for people to 
II i6i 



1 62 £ rmCAL MARRIA GE. 

live anywhere within several miles of their work, 
and meet down-town, not as neighbors, but as 
factors in the far-reaching mechanism of modern 
society. All interests in a city verge toward the 
center, and as business is managed on the clear- 
ing-house principle, we are saved the trouble of 
personally knowdng those with whom we have 
dealings. This tendency of modern industry has 
even invaded the home, and threatens to make it 
a mere lodging-place. However much we may 
boast of the transformations wrought by our 
modern conquest of nature, we can not for a 
moment deny that grave dangers are inherent in 
the subordination of man to machinery and mo- 
tion. In seeking to control nature, man has 
become her slave. 

To propose that we set ourselves against the 
ascertained tendencies of modern industrial life, 
would, to many students of economics, seem the 
suggestion of an idle dreamer. Individual men 
seem helplessly carried along by the movement 
of their time. Who can set himself against the 
apparently irresistible sweep of economic forces ? 
Yet every social or moral reform is the result of 
such resistance, — the result of man's taking his 
destiny into his own hands and opposing con- 
scious will to the blind tendencies of things. We 
can not sit tamely down and see our good ship 
driven upon the rocks without making an effort 



THE FAMILY. 1 63 

to keep her in deep water or guide her into a 
safe harbor. The history of nations is not the 
story of mere fatalism. If it were, a curse 
would rest upon the generations that come after 
us. The problem of man's future on earth is a 
problem of intelligence and of conscious, co- 
operative effort. Railroads have not made them- 
selves. The telephone is no self-announced 
messenger of modern business. And the same 
human efforts that deliberately introduced these 
social forces can check their evil tendencies. 

True reform, like true charity, begins at home. 
We must set ourselves consciously to the task of 
putting responsibility on every individual who 
claims freedom. We must deliberately endeavor 
to enrich the personal relations of life, and compel 
ourselves to speak the truth to our neighbors in- 
stead of telling lies about them. The place where 
the fight for responsibility and the cultivation 
of personal relations must begin, is in the home, 
from which it may be carried into the neighbor- 
hood, the city, the State. The home is the last 
stronghold of personality, and no effort must be 
spared in its defense. lyCt us see some of the 
ways in which the marriage reforms suggested in 
this book would contribute to the redemption of 
society from the ethical pessimism that is already 
prevalent, and from the dangers of the further 
degeneracy that will inevitably come unless the 



1 64 ETHICAL MARRIAGE ^ 

evil tendencies of city civilization are checked. 
We may take up the principal political groups in 
turn, beginning with the family, which occu- 
pies the smallest territorial division of the state. 

The acceptance of the co-operative social pur- 
poses of marriage would give the essential unity 
to home life that is needed to preserve it against 
the inroads of mechanical commercialism. Con- 
tinence and the elimination of shame would 
remove the chief obstacles now standing in the 
way of purposive co-operation in the family. 

The family is a territorial group. The whole 
inhabited area of a country is divided up into 
minute, though unequal ''spheres of influence,'* 
which we call homes. Political government is 
based on territorial jurisdiction, and the home is 
the smallest distinctive group to which functions 
of government are assigned. The political sig- 
nificance of the home organization is thus seen 
to be fundamental and far-reaching. 

No place is more unsuitable than the home for 
the arbitrary exercise of authority. Every family 
ought to have frequent meetings for the discussion 
of its ideals and purposes. These would be the 
primary deliberative assemblies for purposes of 
local self-government. The recognition of duty 
as the motive for marriage would make such a 
family meeting as natural as it is necessary. In- 
deed, in the best homes we already have gather- 
ings for religious worship or self-culture. The 



THE PAMILV, 165 

daily meeting for Scripture reading and prayer 
is not so prevalent as formerly, and in most cases 
follows methods that are too stereotyped to meet 
the needs of a progressive family. There ought 
to be some regular course of reading, discussion, 
work, or play, that will for the time being con- 
centrate the interests of the family and make it 
a school in social development. But the work of 
the meeting should not become rigid and exclu- 
sive, — an end in itself. Its real purpose should 
be to bring the family together, and furnish an 
opportunity for the development of the best type 
of democracy in the home government. 

With a home life founded on purpose, and 
proud of its function, the natural impulse of love 
would prompt each member of the family to lay 
his individual problems before all; and the best 
wisdom of the group would be readily available 
for the use of the child in the emergencies that 
so often confront a young life. In the home, 
according to the ideals of democracy, the small- 
est child's reason should outweigh the biggest 
man's notion. Children and parents alike must 
learn to govern themselves. ' ' The bringing up 
of a child thus means a series of lessons in self- 
restraint, in watchfulness, in adherence to an 
ideal, for the parent even more than for the 
child. ' ' ®^ The family is the first great school of 
citizenship, and as its ideals are, so are the ideals 
of the neighborhood, the city, and the state. 



CHAPTER XIX. 

THE NKIGHBORHOOD. 

IT is possible in New York City for two men to 
live on the opposite sides of a house- wall for 
many years without knowing each other's name. 
Some people prefer life in a metropolis because 
there they can find the deepest solitude, or be- 
cause they wish to follow their individual inter- 
ests in choosing associates. The rich can get 
away from the poor, the moral from the immoral, 
the religious from the profane. This opportunity 
to escape the annoyances and responsibilities of a 
varied acquaintance and association may be con- 
ducive to the comfort of selfish men and women, 
but it certainly is not favorable to the symmetri- 
cal development of social character. A man's 
neighbors are naturally the people who live 
nearest to him, not the members of his church or 
his secret society who are scattered all over the 
city; and, though association according to free 
choice may be invaluable for the organization of 
special interests, yet this organization can not 
with safety to the state be permitted to supersede 
the organization of local interests in the neigh- 
borhood. 

1 66 



THE NEIGHBORHOOD. 167 

Nothing hinders neighborhood life so much as 
unhappy family life. A home in which e very- 
closet conceals a skeleton is not a place in which 
neighbors can spend a pleasant evening. The 
purer the home, and the better it is organized for 
the culture of its members, the larger factor it 
will be in the maintenance of a healthy commu- 
nity life. A home that has ideals will desire to 
extend them, and there is no way of doing this 
so effectively as by letting one's neighbors see 
into the beautiful relationships of a home situated 
in their midst. Too many people try to reform 
the world from a distance. Society can not be 
upraised except by the upward movement of its 
individuals and its families. In our progress 
toward better things we are not hurried along 
by a ''lightning express'' while we sleep. An 
ideal home extends its influence in every direc- 
tion, raising the ideals of other homes, helping to 
educate the parents and children of the neighbor- 
hood, bringing the neighbors together in social 
relations, and leading the way in every enterprise 
of worthy social effort. 

Every community needs a meeting-place with 
adequate facilities for neighborhood gatherings. 
Although the church has often in rural communi- 
ties served this end reasonably well, yet in cities 
it is not usually a neighborhood institution, while 
in any case its religious or denominational asso- 



1 68 ETHICAL MARRIAGE. 

ciations make a large share of the community 
hesitate to use its hospitality. What is needed 
is a building equipped with books and art, games 
and club-rooms, parlors and lecture-rooms, where 
any responsible member of the community may 
go to meet his neighbors for any social purpose, 
and where the advantages of culture will be 
equalized to all who can appreciate them. The 
experiments carried on in the way of institutional 
churches and social settlements show that the 
neighborhood problem is not altogether insoluble 
even in the largest cities. With a suitable meet- 
ing-place and a little intelligent effort on the part 
of socially conscious households, the common in- 
terests of local residence will resist the exclusive 
tendencies of modern life toward organization on 
a large scale. 

It seems more than likely that the demand for 
a neighborhood meeting-place and a better organ- 
ization of neighborhood life can best be met 
through the public schools. One of the ideals of 
education is to bring the^home into closer touch 
with the schools. The school building and the 
local educational interest already furnish a natural 
opportunity for the cultivation of neighborhood 
unity. With the more general recognition of the 
necessity of instruction in the physiology of sex, 
it will devolve upon the public school-teacher to 
supplement deficient home instruction in this 



THE NEIGHBORHOOD. 169 

matter, and thus the family will be joined to the 
neighborhood by one more link of common in- 
terest. Furthermore, the realization of demo- 
cratic principles in the home would react upon 
the school, and both necessitate and make possible 
the granting to the pupils of J more responsibility 
in self -government/^ Above all else the new 
ideals of family life would react upon the neigh- 
borhood and the school through the substitution 
of social duty for mere personal convenience as a 
motive to action. Every neighborhood would 
then care for its own destitute without encourag- 
ing fraudulent pauperism; would maintain its own 
institutions of culture without having to resort to 
the charitable foundations of unearned riches; and 
would secure its own local improvements through 
united effort and responsible representation in the 
deliberations of the larger social group. 



CHAPTER XX. 

'THE) CITY. 

WEALTH and population have during the 
nineteenth century been rapidly drifting 
into cities. This movement is universal among 
the great progressive nations of the world, and 
we have every reason to believe that cities will 
keep on growing for a long time to come. In 
all probability, within another fifty years half of 
the people and the bulk of the wealth of Europe 
and America will be in cities. The city is the 
great objective fact in our civilization. The con- 
ditions of urban life have often been looked upon 
with suspicion by those who were most anxious 
for the welfare of the nations. The aggregation 
of ignorant and foreign-born citizens, the con- 
gestion of homes, the increase of crime, vice, 
and pauperism, the absence of the healthful 
environment of country life, the separation of 
rich and poor, the corruption of politics; — all 
these have been pointed out as indications that 
the American city is the sore spot in our national 
life, threatening its physical welfare, its moral 
integrity, and its intellectual vigor. Yet the 
growth of cities goes on unchecked, and the 
170 



THE C/TV. 171 

life of the nation is inextricably involved in 
their life. In the cities civilization must over- 
come its foes or be overcome by them/^ 

One of the greatest dangers to the vitality of 
the people is the vice that flourishes in cities. 
Drunkenness, gambling, prostitution, indecent 
theatrical exhibitions, ** yellow journalism," and 
all the long category of vicious activities arising 
from the want of moral restraint in public opin- 
ion, find their most favorable soil in cities. The 
fundamental cause of this is the destruction of 
neighborhood life already referred to; for, with- 
out neighborhood life the vicious classes can es- 
cape most of the restraint that would come from 
the fear of giving offense to those acquainted 
with them. We must, therefore, look for the 
moral salvation of cities in the re-establishment 
of healthy local associations. The part that the 
family has to play in accomplishing this has al- 
ready been suggested. 

But continence in marriage would tend to di- 
minish vice in a much more direct way. Pros- 
titution is the logical outcome of sensual ideals. 
If indulgence of passion is freely permitted within 
the bond of matrimony, it is difficult to see why 
the same indulgence, when precautions are taken 
to avoid offspring, should not be permitted in 
many cases to the unmarried. Furthermore, the 
cultivation of passion through the influence of 



1 7^ ^ THICAL MARRlA CE, 

shame and ignorance makes young men inconti- 
nent and fills the brothels. The elimination of 
shame in the best families would tend to set a 
new standard for art and public amusements. 
Indecency would not be so often tolerated in lit- 
erature, in the theater, on the bill-boards, and in 
social gatherings. Nudeness does not constitute 
indecency. The unclothed human form may be 
as chaste as driven snow, while a look, a grim- 
ace, an attitude, a concealment, may be sugges- 
tive of sensuality, and thus become grossly 
demoralizing. 

The saloon is now '' the poor man^s club.'' - It 
is the most generally available neighborhood 
meeting-place that the city has. This is doubt- 
less the secret of much drunkenness and crime. 
The liquor traffic caters to the social instinct of 
man, and is thus enabled to multiply its victims 
and fill its coffers. If the saloon had a rival 
meeting-place, intemperance would be greatly 
checked. And still more would the adoption 
in virtuous families of a diet favorable to con- 
tinence diminish both directly and by social in- 
fluence the consumption of intoxicants and other 
stimulants. 

Finally, the great problem of poverty would 
be solved if the unwelcome children were never 
born, and the neighborhood realized its unity 
and its responsibility for its own inhabitants. 



THE CITY. 173 

The incorporation of a city provides in the po- 
litical system for a much more elaborate co-oper- 
ation than is possible under the ordinary forms of 
local government. The city has needs by reason 
of its very existence. The bounties of nature 
are no longer within reach of the individual, but 
must be brought to him by vast co-operative en- 
terprises. For the protection of property, life, 
and health; for the construction of bridges, 
streets, and other avenues of travel and trafl&c; 
for the supply of water and light; for the re- 
moval of refuse; for the maintenance of parks, 
museums, and libraries; and for the performance 
of many other public services, the citizens have 
to unite their efforts. 

In cities the environment of life from the cra- 
dle to the grave is artificial, the handiwork of 
man. Thus the opportunity and the necessity 
for co-operation open the way for the salvation 
of the city from the dangers that beset its life. 
In this matter the acceptance of social responsi- 
bility in the home would be of incalculable serv- 
ice; for the man who procreates, not accidentally, 
but purposefully, admits that he is answerable 
for his child* s opportunities. He sees that the 
good work of the family may be largely counter- 
acted by a vicious or unhealthy city environment. 
He is led to see that if he would protect his own 
child he must, as a citizen, proclaim the city's 



1 74 E THICAL MARRIA GE. 

responsibility for the conditions into which the 
next generation will be born. Shortsightedness 
and the inadequate recognition of the duty which 
the present owes to the future are responsible for 
much that is worst in existing municipal condi- 
tions. The irresponsibility of wealth is most 
manifest in the centers of trade and manufac- 
tures. At its base is the same thirst for present 
individual satisfaction that runs riot in sensual 
marriage. The realization of duty in one depart- 
ment of life will inevitably make the whole of life 
more responsible. Continence favors not only 
self-restraint but also simplicity. Responsibility 
for children is conducive to a sense of wider so- 
cial responsibility. The possessor of wealth or 
wisdom or any other good will come to see that 
he holds it in trust, that he is a member of an 
organism, that if his neighbor suffers injury, he 
himself will receive harm, that the richness of 
his life depends not on his possessions, but on his 
social function loyally fulfilled. With the idea 
of responsibility for the welfare of children and 
for the right use of riches, a new ideal of civic 
greatness would come into the foreground. 
Health, cleanliness, beauty, simplicity, purity, 
freedom, life, would take the place of smoke, 
filth, vice, corruption, and sheer bigness and 
populousness. 



THE CITV, 175 

^^A great city is that which has the greatest men and 

women. 
If it be a few ragged huts, it is still the greatest city in 

the whole world. 
The place where a great city stands is not the place of 

stretch 'd wharves, docks, manufadtures, deposits of 

produce merely, 
Nor the place of ceaseless salutes of newcomers or the 

anchor-lifters of the departing, 
Nor the place of the tallest and costliest buildings or 

shops selling goods from the rest of the earth, 
Nor the place of the best libraries and schools, nor the 

place where money is plentiest, 
Nor the place of the most numerous population. 
Where the city stands with the brawniest breed of ora- 
tors and bards, 
Where the city stands that is belov*d by these and loves 

them in return and understands them. 
Where no monuments exist to heroes but in the common 

words and deeds. 
Where thrift is in its place, and prudence is in its place, 
Where the men and women think lightly of the laws, 
Where the slave ceases, and the master of slaves ceases, 
Where the populace rise at once against the never-ending 

audacity of elected persons, 



Where children are taught to be laws to themselves and 
to depend on themselves, 



Where women walk in public processions in the streets 
the same as men, 



176 ETHtCAL MARRlACR. 

Where they enter the public assembly and take places 

the same as the men; 
Where the city of the faithf ulest friends stands, 
Where the city of the cleanliness of the sexes stands, 
Where the city of the healthiest fathers stands, 
Where the city of the best-bodied mothers stands 
There the great city stands.*' ^^ 



CHAPTER XXI. 

THE STATK. 

IN all struggles for political and social better- 
ment we find two methods employed, which 
sometimes come into rivalry, — one the appeal to 
the conscience of the individual citizen, the other 
the appeal to the organized forces of society. It 
is said by some that the laws are good enough, 
but what we need is good men in ofl&ce. Others 
strive for a reform in the laws, seeming to think 
that good citizenship can be made to order. The 
true way of reform is less simple than either of 
these alternatives. We must have both good 
laws and good oiBficers, both organization and 
integrity. 

These two requisites for a nation's success in 
political life find their elements in the intelli- 
gence and conscience of individual citizens. A 
comprehension of the duties of citizenship with- 
out the will to fulfill them tends only to deprav- 
ity and degeneration. The desire to be faithful 
to one's country without any knowledge of how 
to perform social duties leads only to blundering 
and deeper misery. The patriotism that says, 
*'My country, right or wrong!" while having 
12 177 



lyS BthiCal marriage, 

in it an element necessary to national integrity, 
springs from the selfishness of the individual, 
which makes him always affirm that he is in the 
right, and always obey the blind instinct of self- 
defense; it springs from the narrowness of family 
pride which makes kinsmen hasten to each oth- 
er* s aid in every scheme for self-aggrandizement 
and in every effort to evade disagreeable penal- 
ties; it springs from the civic egotism which 
prompts every man to boast of his own city's 
superiority and enthusiastically ignore the facts 
of misgovernment, vice, and uncleanness which 
may be patent to any intelligent observer. Pa- 
triotism in our country often runs into bombast. 
True, there are plenty of our young men who 
stand ready to risk their lives in battle whenever 
their country may be at war. But the virtues 
of patriotism tell most in time of peace. The 
first great duty of the patriot is to be a well-gov- 
erned, self-supporting man or woman. The 
second great duty is to stand ready to participate 
intelligently and faithfully in social co-operation, 
— family life, industrial enterprise, educational 
work, and the far-reaching tasks of political 
democracy. National glory can not long conceal 
civic corruption. National wealth can not long 
make the world oblivious of the indigence of the 
populace. Conscience, which moves the citizen 
to be loyal to his duty, and intelligence, which 



THE STATE, 1 79 

enables him to co-operate with his fellows for the 
attainment of well-considered ends, are the indis- 
pensable conditions of a vigorous and worthy 
national life. 

It is in the family that the nation is bom and 
bred. The transformation of family life in the 
directions of purity, purposiveness, simplicity, 
and democratic organization would transform the 
state likewise. But we must admit the hopeless- 
ness of any immediate transformation in the 
great majority of families. Of what use, then, 
will the promulgation of the doctrines of this 
book be to the state ? In this fast age we clamor 
for results; we are not satisfied with '' the mills 
of the gods'* — they grind too slowly. Per- 
haps the greatest obstacle to the acceptance of 
procreation as a method of political reform is the 
length of time required to make our efforts 
widely felt. When the daily newspapers appear 
at intervals of a few hours with the news of the 
world's doings, when the blunders of a few years 
in a city's government may doom future genera- 
tions to wretched conditions of life, unchange- 
able except by almost impossible reconstructions; 
when great nations fight and the map of the 
world is changed in a few months, — we are loth 
to wait upon the tardy processes of nature. But 
there is no other way to make men than by pro- 
creation. ''Haste makes waste" is as true a 



'"m 



1 80 ETHICAL MARRIAGE. 

proverb when applied to national development as 
when applied to domestic economy. It is to be 
noted, however, that leaders are as necessary as 
resolute, sturdy followers; and in the training of 
leaders the pioneer ethical families fulfill their 
most important function. The struggle for social 
regeneration must be carried on all along the 
line; the individual conscience must be quick- 
ened and scientific co-operation encouraged; the 
slow way of making good citizens by the lifelong 
work of the family must never be lost sight of, 
while the more rapid methods of education and 
political reform are being used wherever there is 
opportunity. 

A change in family ideals would mean a change 
in national ideals. The ideal of service would 
replace that of self-aggrandizement. Our pur- 
pose as a nation would not be to inflate ourselves 
with riches or to make the world fear our bullets 
and our warships. Every nation has an oppor- 
tunity for world-service through the contribu- 
tion of its perfected character and institutions to 
the world-life. The days of national isolation 
are past. The organization of science, commu- 
nication, commerce, and social reform is becom- 
ing international. The new expansion policy of 
the United States, coupled with the prospect of 
a better integration of the Anglo-Saxon race for 
its work of civilizing the world, stands side by 



THR STATE, l8l 

side with the Russian czar's international dis- 
armament conference, as a portent of acknowl- 
edged national responsibility in world- develop- 
ment. The nations must look to the bulwarks 
of their strength. Homes, neighborhoods, cities, 
are the living constituent elements of every state. 
If they rot in sensuality, or harden into 'mere 
producing mechanisms, the proudest people's 
sovereign hand will be nerveless for the grasp of 
its world-problem. 

'' Take up the White Man's burden — 

No iron rule of kings, 
But toil of serf and sweeper — 

The tale of common things. 
The ports ye shall not enter, 

The roads ye shall not tread, 
Go, make them with your living. 

And mark them with your dead.'* ^* 



■^ 



CHAPTER XXll. 

HUMANITY. 

UNCONQUERABIvE time itself works on 
unceasingly, bringing the nations nearer to 
one another, and awakening the universal con- 
sciousness of the community of mankind; and 
this is the natural preparation for the organization 
of the world. It is no mere matter of accident 
that modern discoveries and numerous new 
methods of communication altogether serve this 
end, that the whole science of modern times fol- 
lows this impulse and belongs in the first place 
to humanity, and only in a subordinate way to 
particular peoples, while a number of hindrances 
and barriers that lay between nations are disap- 
pearing. Even at the present day all Europe 
feels every disturbance in any particular state as 
an evil in which she has to suffer, and what 
happens at her extremest, limits immediately 
awakens universal interest. The spirit of Europe 
already turns its regards to the circuit of the 
globe, and the Aryan race feels itself called to 
manage the world.'* ^^ 

The conception of Humanity, a world-state, 
opens to us a vision of opportunity and duty that 
182 



HUMANITY, 183 

calls us to a new religion, a religion of this 
world. Other-worldly religions are based upon 
the conception that this life is an evil, a limita- 
tion upon the soul of man, and that his supreme 
duty is to free himself from the bonds of being 
and merge himself into the Universal I^ife from 
which he sprang. Brahmanism and Buddhism 
in the East were the outcome of social conditions, 
and embodied in their precepts and their purposes 
that weariness of life characterizing peoples which 
are unable to attain a high degree of social organ- 
ization, and which are consequently, subject to 
the caprices of nature, war, and oppression. The 
progressive nations of the world with their ca- 
pacity for organized effort, need first of all a reli- 
gion of humanity, whose purpose shall be the 
perfection of human society and the development 
of the highest type of men. We must have a 
religion of democracy, a religion that will frankly 
recognize the worthfulness of this life, and that 
will teach us to set manfully about the work of 
making it more worth living. One of the tenets 
of the new religion will surely be the duty of 
responsible procreation, made possible by a life 
temperate in all things, and accomplished by the 
co-operation of men and women in homes that 
have ideals. 

' ' There can be no ideal society without ideal 
men; and for the production of those we require 



1 84 ETHICAL MARRIAGE, 

not only insight but a motive power; fire as well 
as light. Perhaps a philosophic understanding 
of our social problems is not even the chief want 
of our times. We need prophets as well as 
teachers, men like Carlyle or Ruskin or Tolstoi, 
who are able to add for us a new severity to con- 
science or a new breadth to duty. Perhaps we 
need a new Christ. We want at least an acces- 
sion of the Christlike spirit — the spirit of self- 
devotion to 'ideal ends — applying itself persist- 
ently in all the departments of life, and in the 
midst of all the complexities of our modern civili- 
zation.'' ^'^ 

It is the despair of social reform that co-opera- 
tion, except for strictly selfish purposes, is a 
difficult thing to bring about. Kvery reformer 
pulls his own way while the enemies of progress 
and freedom organize compact * ^ machines ' ' 
whose motive force is money or other worldly 
gain. With the reform of marriage, conditions 
are quite different. For the building of an ideal 
home the co-operation of two persons only is 
primarily required. However defective our laws 
may be, they do not present any great positive 
hindrances to right conduct on the part of those 
who have the will to act rightly. A young man 
or woman, therefore, who is eager to do some- 
thing for humanity, does not need to wait until a 



HUMANITY. 185 

multitude are ready to band together for the 
pursuit of ideal ends, but may at once in the 
preparation for marriage and in its consummation 
in parenthood contribute most unerringly to the 
social and political welfare of his country and the 
world. 



NOTES. 

Note /, page p. — The celibacy of the priesthood was 
not an original idea with Roman Catholic Christians. 
Five hundred years before Christ, Buddha had founded 
a religion in India which enjoined chastity upon its 
priests, and the influence of Hindu and Persian asceti- 
cism can be traced through the first centuries of the 
Christian religion. 

''With the conquests of Alexander, Judaism was 
exposed to new influences, and was brought into relation 
at once with Grecian thought and with the subtle mys- 
ticism of India, with which intercourse became frequent 
under the Greek Bmpire. Beyond the Indus the Sankhya 
philosophy was already venerable, which taught the 
nothingness of life, and that the supreme good consisted 
in the absolute victory over all human wants and desires. 
Already Buddha had reduced his philosophy into a 
system of religion, the professors of which were bound 
to chastity — a rule impossible of observance by the 
world at large, but which became obligatory upon its 
innumerable priests and monks, when it spread and estab- 
lished itself as a church, thus furnishing the prototype 
which was subsequently copied by Roman Christianity.'* 
— Henry C, Lea, in ** ^ Historical Sketch of Sacerdotal 
Celibacy in the Christian Church,''' p. 2j, 

*' There is a great difference between the degrees of 
earnestness with which men exert themselves in the 
repression of their sensual passions, and in the amount 
of indulgence which is conceded to their lower nature; 
but there is no difference in the direction of the virtuous 

187 



1 88 1^0 TES. 

impulse. While, too, in the case of adultery, and in the 
production of children, questions of interest and utility 
do undoubtedly intervene, we are conscious that the 
general progress turns upon an entirely different order of 
ideas. The feeling of all men and the language of all 
nations, the sentiment, which though often weakened, is 
never wholly effaced, that this appetite, even in its most 
legitimate gratification, is a thing to be veiled and with- 
drawn from sight, all that is known under the names of 
decency and indecency, concur in proving that we have 
an innate, intuitive, instinctive perception that there is 
something degrading in the sensual part of our nature, 
something to which a feeling of shame is naturally 
attached, something jars with our conception of purity, 
something that we could not with any propriety ascribe 
to an all holy being. . . . It is this feeling that 
lies at the root of the whole movement I have described, 
and it is this, too, that produced that sense of the 
sanctity of perfect continence which the Catholic Church 
has so warmly encouraged, but which may be traced 
through the most distant ages, and the most varied 
creeds.'' — W, E. H, Lecky, in ^^ History of European 
Morals,'' VoL /, p, io8. 

Note 2, page 15, — Mutual desire and agreement are not 
generally regarded as sufl&cient ground for divorce, 
although separation of husband and wife is often legally 
accomplished where *' unfaithfulness, ' ' or adultery, is 
not proved. 

* ' Though marriage involves, for its inception, the 
highest exercise of unbiased volition, the existence of 
the state of marriage after its creation excludes, with 
equal peremptoriness the notion of its dissolubility at 
the bidding of license or caprice on either side, or even 
on both sides. So soon as once the state of marriage is 



NOTES. 189 

created, the parties to it are no longer in a condition of 
responsibility only to one another. Beside them and 
above them is the community to which they belong. 

**The community not only represents the claims of 
possible children and relations of all sorts, deeply con- 
cerned in the fixity and permanence of bonds which 
control their own lives, but has an interest peculiarly its 
own. It is of the utmost concern to the community that 
the family groups which compose it, in the last analysis, 
should be definite and unmutilated ; that the utmost 
opportunity should be afforded for the quiet and orderly 
development of the affections and of the sentiments of 
mutual trust and dependence which are only brought to 
maturity in the lifelongohome ; that the family should 
be a school for the restraint of passion, for self -disci- 
pline, and for conciliatory self-surrender, not an arena 
for the practice of irresponsible self-indulgence ; that, in 
fine, in the family the social capacities should gain pre- 
dominance over the centrifugal individualism of sav- 
agery, and the state itself should be at once reflected and 
anticipated in its most ubiquitous and natural type.'* 
— Sheldon Amos, in *' The Science of Politics,''' pp. 
i6s, 166, 

Note s, page 16, — '*The mystical character which the 
church imparted to marriage has been extremely influ- 
ential. Partly by raising marriage into a sacrament, and 
partly by representing it as, in some mysterious and not 
very definable sense, an image of the union of Christ 
with his church, a feeling was fostered that a lifelong 
union of one man and one woman is, under all circum- 
stances, the single form of intercourse between the sexes 
that is not illegitimate, and this conviction has acquired 
the force of a primal moral intuition,'* — W* £, Hn 
Lecky, loc. cit , Vol, II, p. ^6j, 



IQO NOTES. 

Note 4y page //. — ** Marriage is not only a relation be- 
tween persons, and so a mutual contract; it is also a rela- 
tion toward society and the state, and therefore a social 
and civil contract." — B. Franklin^ D. Z>., in ** Marriage 
and Divorce y^' p, 128, 

*' A social relation, say the relation of husband and 
wife, would be an unsanctified unity of repellent atoms 
through desires which turn them into external means of 
each other's life, if those who participate in it were not, 
by the fact of their union, brought into the conscious 
presence of something higher than their individuality. 
In fact, in this most direct union of individuals, nature 
generally takes care of this, by awaking affections which 
make the interests of the children (who represent the 
continued unity of the family) predominant over the 
septate interests of the heads of the family. ' ' — Edward 
Caird, in " Critical Philosophy of Immanuel Kant,^^ 

Vol. Ily p. 402, 

Note 5, page 20. — In ancient India both Brahmanism 
and Buddhism postulated the worthlessness of life in this 
world. Yet the laws of Manu, which were recognized as 
authoritative by the believers in Brahmanism, made mar- 
riage and reproduction a duty. This is accounted for by 
the existence of ancestor worship and the consequent 
necessity of a man's having a son to honor his spirit after 
death. Furthermore, procreation was rendered less 
responsible by the belief in the transmigration of souls, 
on account of which a child was not considered to be 
in reality a new being, but simply the embodiment of 
some soul making the endless journey through the cycle 
of existences. Buddha did not deny transmigration, but 
proclaimed that the supreme end of life was to get out of 
the cycle, and lose one's self in Nirvana, which, to the 
western mind at least, means annihilation. But suicide 



MOTES. 191 

would not accomplish the desired end; it would only 
thrust the soul back into a new chain of transmigrations. 
According to Buddha the only way to escape from exist- 
ence was to think one's way out of it. Only the elect 
few, indeed only those who had already nearly reached 
the end of the cycle of existences, could hope to attain 
Nirvana at once. Upon these, the priests of Buddhism, 
celibacy was enjoined. They in their own lives were 
supposed to attain the summit of existence, the complete 
fulfillment of life ending in the annihilation of individ- 
ual consciousness, and, therefore, to them offspring were 
unnecessary and impossible. 

Note 6y page ^5. — ' ' An Essay on the Principle of 
Population,''^ by Rev. T. R. Malthus, first published in 
1798. Malthus's principal idea was that population 
naturally tends to increase by geometrical progression, 
while the means of subsistence can not possibly increase, 
in the long run, faster than by arithmetical progression. 
The obvious conclusion from these premises was that the 
increase of population must be checked by ** moral re- 
straint, vice, or misery." The *' moral restraint " advo- 
cated by Malthus was the postponement of marriage until 
comparatively late in life, and strict chastity outside of 
the marriage relation. He says, p. 404: ** It is not required 
of us to act from motives to which we are unaccustomed; 
to pursue a general good which we may not distinctly 
comprehend, or the effect of which may be weakened by 
distance and diffusion. The happiness of the whole is to 
be the result of the happiness of individuals, and to begin 
first with them. No co-operation is required. Every 
step tells. He who performs his duty faithfully will 
reap the full fruits of it, whatever may be the number of 
others who fail. This duty is intelligible to the humblest 
capacity. It is merely that he is not to bring beings into 



iQi NOTMS. 

the world for whom he can not find the means of support. 
When once this subject is cleared from the obscurity 
thrown over it by parochial laws and private benevolence, 
every man must feel the strongest conviction of such an 
obligation. If he can not support his children, they must 
starve; and if he marry in the face of a fair probability 
that he shall not be able to support his children, he is 
guilty of all the evils which he thus brings upon himself, 
his wife, and his offspring. It is clearly his interest, and 
will tend greatly to promote his happiness, to defer marry- 
ing, till by industry and economy he is in a capacity to 
support the children that he may reasonably expect from 
his marriage; and as he can not in the meantime gratify 
his passions without violating an express command of 
God, and running a great risk of injuring himself or 
some of his fellow creatures, considerations of his own 
interest and happiness will dictate to him the strong obli- 
gation to a moral conduct while he remains unmarried. ' * 
Malthus's chief error seems to have been his faihire to 
recognize the possibility of a voluntary limitation of off- 
spring after marriage. He would have all men wait 
before marrying until they have accumulated enough 
property to insure their ability to support as many chil- 
dren as they * ' may reasonably expect ' ' from their late 
marriages. ^Evidently he had not got beyond the current 
conception of marriage, which is, by definition, a state 
of habitual and frequently recurring sexual intercourse 
between a man and a woman, no one act of which has 
any conscious and definite relation to procreation, but as 
a general result of which children, few or many, are born 
under the providence of God. In all cases the individual 
should, of course, limit the number of his children to 
such an extent that he would be able to care for them. 
This duty, however, ought not to necessitate harmful 



NOTES, 193 

delay in the formation of a home. Moreover, applying 
Malthus^s own ethical rule there would be no reason from 
the social standpoint why a family should not contain 
a dozen children if their procreation and rearing could be 
properly accomplished without too seriously limiting the 
lives of the parents. One thing Malthus certainly failed 
to urge, namely, that social obligation requires the pru- 
dent and fit couple to have children^ and, within reason- 
able limits, to have as many as they can properly care for. 

John Stuart Mill represents a great advance beyond 
Malthus in the ethics of marriage. In his ' ' Principles of 
Political Economy," Book II, chapter XIII, section i, he 
says: ** One can not wonder that silence on this great 
department of human duty should produce unconscious- 
ness of moral obligations, when it produces oblivion of 
physical facts. That it is possible to delay marriage, and 
to live in abstinence while unmarried, most people are 
willing to allow ; but when persons are once married, the 
idea in this country never seems to enter anyone's mind 
that having or not having a family, or the number of 
which it shall consist, is at all amenable to their own con- 
trol. One would imagine that children were rained down 
upon married people, direct from heaven, without their 
being art or part in the matter; that it was really, as the 
common phrases have it, God's will, and not their own, 
which decided the niunbers of their offspring." 

Other passages from J. S. Mill's " Political Economy '* 
are the following: — 

**One of the most binding of all obligations, that of 
not bringing children into the world unless they can be 
maintained in comfort, and brought up with a likelihood 
of its continuance, is both disregarded in practice and 
made light of in theory in a manner disgraceful to human 
intelligence." — Book II) chapter /, section j. 



194 NOTES. 

** Everyone has a right to live. We will suppose this 
granted. But no one has a right to bring creatures into 
life, to be supported by other people. Whoever means to 
stand upon the first of these rights must renounce all 
pretension to the last. . . . Yet there are abundance of 
writers and public speakers, including many of most 
ostentatious pretensions to high feeling, whose views of 
life are so truly brutish, that they see hardship in pre- 
venting paupers from breeding hereditary paupers in the 
very workhouse itself/* — Book II, chapter XII, sec- 
Hon 2, 

*' Discussions on the condition of the laborers, lamenta- 
tions over its wretchedness, denunciations of all who are 
supposed to be indifferent to it, projects of one kind or 
another for improving it, were in no country and no time 
of the world so rife as at present; but there is a tacit 
agreement to ignore totally the law of wages, or to dis- 
miss it in a parenthesis, with such terms as * hard-hearted 
Malthusianism, as if it were not a thousand times more 
hard-hearted to tell human beings that they may, than 
that they may not, call into existence swarms of creatures 
who are sure to be miserable, and who are most likely to 
be depraved; and forgetting that the conduct, which it is 
reckoned so cruel to disapprove, is a degrading slavery to 
a brute instinct in one of the persons concerned, and 
most commonly, in the other, helpless submission to a 
revolting abuse of power.*' — Book II, chapter XI , sec- 
tion 6, 

And Herbert Spencer, in ** Principles of Kthics," Vol. 
I, p. 550, says: '* If improvident marriages are to be repro- 
bated — if to bring children into the world when there 
will probably be no means of maintaining any, is a comrse 
calling for condemnation; then there must be condemna- 
tion for those who bring many children into the world 



NOTES. 195 

when they have means of properly rearing only a few. 
Improvidence after marriage can not be considered right 
if improvidence before marriage is considered wrong/' 

Note 7, page 27. — Pp. 339-348. Mr. Galton says, p. 
343 : " It is a maxim of Mai thus that the period of 
marriage ought to be delayed in order that the earth may 
not be overcrowded by a population for whom there is 
no place at the great table of nature. If this doctrine 
influenced all classes alike, I should have nothing to say 
about it here, one way or another, for it would hardly 
affect the discussions in this book; but as it is put for- 
ward as a rule of conduct for the prudent part of man- 
kind to follow, while the imprudent are necessarily left 
free to disregard it, I have no hesitation in saying that it 
is a most pernicious rule of conduct in its bearing upon 
the race. Its effect would be such as to cause the race of 
the prudent to fall, after a few centuries, into an almost 
incredible inferiority of numbers to that of the impru- 
dent, and it is therefore calculated to bring utter ruin 
upon the breed of any country where the doctrine pre- 
vailed. I protest against the nobler races' being encour- 
aged to withdraw in this way from the struggle for 
existence." 

Note 8y page 27, — ** Civilization, with its social, moral, 
and material complications, has introduced a disturbing 
and conflicting element. It is not now, as Mr. Wallace 
depicts, that intellectual has been substituted for phys- 
ical superiority, but that artificial and conventional have 
taken the place of natural advantages as the ruling and 
deciding force. It is no longer the strongest, the health- 
iest, the most perfectly organized; it is not men of the 
finest physique y the largest brain, the most developed 
intelligence, the best morale^ that are * favored ' and suc- 
cessful 4n the struggle for existence,' that survive, that 



196 NOTES. 

rise to the surface, that * natural selection * makes the 
parents of future generations, the continuators of a 
picked and perfected race. It is still ' the most favored, * 
no doubt, in some sense, who bear away the palm, but 
the indispensable favor is too often that of fortune, not 
of nature. The various influences of our social system 
combine to traverse the righteous and salutary law which 
God ordained for the preservation of a worthy and im- 
proving humanity; and the Varieties' of man that en- 
dure and multiply their likenesses, and mold the features 
of the coming times, are not the soundest constitutions 
that can be found among us, nor the most amiable or 
self-denying tempers, nor the most sagacious judgments, 
nor even the most imperious and persistent wills, but 
often the precise reverse, — often those emasculated by 
luxury and damaged by want, those rendered reckless 
by squalid poverty, and those whose physical and mental 
energies have been sapped, and whose characters have 
been grievously impaired, by long indulgence and fore- 
stalled desires. " — W, R, Greg, in ''Enigmas of Life,'' 
pp. 123, 124. 

** In a wild state, by the law of natural selection, only 
or chiefly, the sounder and stronger specimens were 
allowed to continue their species; with us, thousands 
with tainted constitutions, frames weakened by malady 
or waste, brains bearing subtle and hereditary mischief 
in their recesses, are suffered to transmit their terrible 
inheritance of evil to other generations, and to spread it 
through a whole community." — Ibid., p. 12^. 

* ' A republic is conceivable in which paupers should be 
forbidden to propagate; in which all candidates for the 
proud and solemn privilege of continuing an untainted 
and perfecting race should be subjected to a pass or a 
competitive examination, and those only be suffered to 



N-OTES. 197 

transmit their names and families to future generations 
who had a pure, vigorous, and well-developed constitu- 
tion to transmit; so that paternity should be the right 
and function exclusively of the elite of the nation, and 
humanity be thus enabled to march on securely and 
without drawback to its ultimate possibilities of prog- 
ress." — Ibid.y p. 132, 

** It can not be denied that the tendency, in communi- 
ties of advanced and complicated civilization, to multiply 
from their lower rather than higher specimens, consti- 
tutes one of the most formidable dangers with which that 
civilization is threatened; and, if not counterworked in 
time, must bring about eventually the physical, and along 
with that moral and intellectual deterioration of the race. ' * 
— Ibid,,p, 138. 

**In every country in which a large standing army is 
kept up, the finest young men are taken by conscription 
or are enlisted. They are thus exposed to early death 
during war, are often tempted into vice, and are prevented 
from marrying during the prime of life. On the other 
hand, the shorter and feebler men, with poor constitutions, 
are left at home, and consequently have a much better 
chance of marrying and propagating their kind.*' — 
Charles Darwin ^ in ^^ Descent of Man and Selection in 
Relation to Sex^'^ p, 132, 

** A most important obstacle in civilized countries to an 
increase in the number of men of a superior class has 
been strongly insisted on by Mr. Greg and Mr. Galton, 
namely, the fact that the very poor and reckless, who 
are often degraded by vice, almost invariably marry 
early, while the careful and frugal, who are generally 
otherwise virtuous, marry late in life so that they may be 
able to support themselves and their children in comfort. 
Those who marry early produce within a given period not 



1 98 NOTES. 

only a greater number of generations, but, as shown by 
Dr. Duncan, they produce many more children. The 
children, moreover, that are born by mothers during the 
prime of life are heavier and larger, and therefore more 
vigorous, than those born at other periods. Thus the 
reckless, degraded, and often vicious members of society 
tend to increase at a quicker rate than the provident and 
generally virtuous members." — Ibid.^ pp. i^6^ 757. 

**We must remember that progress is no invariable 
rule. It is very difficult to say why one nation rises, be- 
comes more powerful, and spreads more widely than 
another. Or why the same nation progresses more 
quickly at one time than at another. We can only say 
that it depends on an increase in the actual number of 
the population, on the number of men endowed with 
high intellectual and moral qualities, as well as on their 
standard of excellence. Corporeal structure appears to 
have little influence, except as far as vigor of body leads 
to vigor of mind. ' ' —Ibid. , p . i^g. 

*' Who can positively say why the Spanish nation, so 
dominant at one time, has been distanced in the race. 
The awakening of the nations of Europe from the Dark 
Ages is a still more perplexing problem. At that early 
period, as Mr. Galton has remarked, almost all the men of 
a gentle nature, those given to meditation or culture of the 
mind, had no refuge except in the bosom of a church 
which demanded celibacy; and this could hardly fail to 
have a deteriorating influence on each successive genera- 
tion. During this same period the Holy Inquisition 
selected with extreme care the freest and boldest men in 
order to burn or imprison them. In Spain alone some of 
the best men — those who doubted and questioned, and 
without doubting there can be no progress — were elimi- 
nated during three centuries at the rate of a thousand a 
year.** — Ibid., p. 160. 



NOTES. 190 

** Obscure as is the problem of the advance of civiliza- 
tion, we can at least see that a nation which produced 
during a lengthened period the greatest number of highly 
intellectual, energetic, brave, patriotic, and benevolent 
men, would generally prevail over less favored nations." 
— Ibid, y p. 161. 

Noteg^ page 27. — See article by W. O. Atwater, in the 
Century Magazine, Vol. XXI, Nov., 1891, pp. 101-112. 

Note 10, p. j2. — ''A young woman without fortune, 
when she has passed her twenty-fifth year, begins to fear, 
and with reason, that she may lead a life of celibacy, 
and with a heart capable of forming a strong attachment 
feels, as each year creeps on, her hopes of finding an ob- 
ject on which to rest her affections gradually diminishing, 
and the imeasiness of her situation aggravated by the 
silly and unjust prejudices of the world. *^ — MalthuSy 
loc. cit.y p, jg8. 

Among the lower animals and among many savage races 
the female has a great degree of freedom in choosing her 
mate. Says Bdward Westermarck: **It should be noted 
that among savages it is, as a rule, the man only that 
runs the risk of being obliged to lead a single life. Hence 
it is obvious that to the best of his ability he must 
endeavor to be taken into favor by making himself as 
attractive as possible. In civilized Kurope, on the other 
hand, the opposite occurs. Here it is the woman that has 
the greatest difficulty in getting married." — ** The His- 
tory of Human Marriage,^'' p, i8s> 

**The transition from the animal to the human state 
has wrought a complete revolution in the sexual relations, 
and transferred the selective power absolutely from the 
female to the male sex. In no other department has 
there been so great a reversal of natural law.*' — Lester 
F. Ward, in '' Dynamic Sociology,'^ Vol, /, p. 61^, 



200 NOTES. 

"The first step toward the subjugation of the female 
sex was the conquest by the males of her prerogative of 
selection. This was the surrender of her virtue in the 
primary sense of the word — of her power over men, 
over society, over her own interests.'* — Ibid,, p, 648, 

A considerable degree of freedom of choice seems to 
have been permitted to woman among the ancient Hin- 
dus, as indicated by the following provisions of their 
sacred law : — 

*' Three years let a damsel wait, though she be mar- 
riageable; but after that time let her choose for herself a 
bridegroom of equal caste and rank. If being not given 
in marriage, she herself seeks a husband, she incurs no 
guilt, nor does he whom she weds.'' — ** The Laws of 
Manu,^^ IX, go, p/; ^^ Sacred Books of the East,'' Vol, 
XXV, A 343- 

After indicating that woman's false position in refer- 
ence to marriage is due to her not having the privilege of 
taking the initiative, Dr. W. H. Byford says : * * I am will- 
ing to incur the risk of ridicule by protesting that, in a 
matter in which her very heart is at stake, woman be 
placed upon an equal footing with man. As society is 
now constituted, and perhaps ever must be, woman is the 
family almost; at least she is the soul and life of it, with 
its quality and relations she is more interested and iden- 
tified, and her welfare more influenced by it than man. 
If, therefore, there is any difference, she is entitled to the 
exclusive privilege of choosing, not only from among 
those who prostrate themselves at her feet, but all the op- 
posite sex. ' ' — * * The Philosophy of Domestic Life, ' ' p, 57. 

Note II, page jj. — Henry D. Thoreau, in * ' Familiar 
lyetters," p. 251, 

Note 12, page 37, — *' Great lawgivers, the founders of 
beneficent religions, great philosophers, and discoverers 



NOTES, 20t 

in science aid the progress of mankind in a far greater 
degree by their works than by leaving a numerous prog- 
eny." — Darwin^ loc. cit., p. 1^4. 

**He that hath wife and children hath given hostages 
to fortune; for they are impediments to great enterprises, 
either of virtue or mischief. Certainly the best works, 
and of greatest merit for the public, have proceeded 
from the unmarried or childless men, which both in 
affection and means have married and endowed the 
public. Yet it were great reason that those that have 
children should have greatest care of future time3, unto 
which they know they must transmit their dearest 
pledges. ' ' — Bacon 's ' * Essays ^ ' ' VIII, ' ' Of Marriage and 
Single Life.^' 

Note 13, page j^.— See Plato's ** Republic," Book V. 
Mr. Ivccky, speaking of the position of women among the 
Greeks, says: ** Plato had argued that women were equal 
to men; but the habits of the people were totally op- 
posed to this theory. Marriage was regarded chiefly in a 
civic light, as a means of producing citizens, and in 
Sparta it was ordered that old or infirm husbands should 
cede their wives to stronger men. " — ''^History of Euro- 
pean Morals ^^^ Vol. II, p. 30^. See also George Grote, 
** History of Greece, VoL /, pp. 488, 4.8g, 

Note 14, pcLge 39. — General Assembly of Ohio, 1898, 
House Bill No. 281, by Mr. Parker. 

Note 15, page 3g. — ''Man scans with scrupulous care 
the character and pedigree of his horses, cattle, and dogs 
before he matches them; but when he comes to his own 
marriage he rarely, or never, takes any such care. He 
is impelled by nearly the same motives as the lower 
animals, when they are left to their own free choice, 
though he is in so far superior to them that he highly 
values mental charms and virtues. On the other hand 



^ 



202 NOTES. 

he is strongly attracted by mere wealth or rank. Yet he 
might by selection do something not only for the bodily 
constitution and frame of his offspring, but for their 
intellectual and moral qualities. Both sexes ought to 
refrain from marriage if they are in any marked degree 
inferior in body or mind." — Darwin^ loc. cit.yp, yo6. 

Note i6^ pcige S5' — Franklin H. Giddings, *' Principles 
of Sociology," pp. 291, 292, 333, 352, 353, 414-416. 

Note 17, page ^8, — ** Essays," First Series, "Friend- 
ship." 

Note 18, page sg, — " No affection, save friendship, has 
any eternity in it. Friendship, ought, therefore, always 
to be cultivated in love itself." — W. R, Alger, in *' The 
Friendships of Women,'*'* p, 104, 

*' If a husband be truly the friend of his wife, — as he 
ought to be, — his love for her as a friend could be just as 
strong, just as tender, just as permanent and unswerving, 
if she were not his wife, nor ever might be. It is such a 
friendship as this which gives a superadded joy — in its 
then abounding opportunities and unhindered privilege 
of freest expression — to the rarest blessings attainable in 
the closest and holiest of all human companionships." — 
H. Clay Trumbull, in ^'Friendship the Master Passion,^' 
p. III. 

* * A true friendship between a husband and a wife may 
precede the love which led to their marriage union, or, 
again, it may follow that love as the choicest of its inci- 
dental results; but whether it comes earlier or later than 
mere wedded love as such, there, as everywhere, the love 
which is friendship transcends all other loves." — Ibid,, 
p. 113. 

*' Married love is destined to increase, to develop. In 
many marriages this growth is checked, because the 
married couple, too secure in possession, neglect to be 



ever acquiring fresh mutual love and esteem. Their 
affection fades into indifference and merely external 
habit. This love may be also impeded and choked when 
love is too selfish, when those who love desire to belong 
to each other in a fashion altogether too partial and 
exclusive, when one can not bear that the other should 
exist in any sense for other pursuits, or for other individ- 
uals, also, but regards all free emotion, all interest be- 
stowed upon other persons or other matters as a depriva- 
tion and an injury.'* — Martensen^ in '* Christian Ethics ^^ 
{Social), p, 30. 

Note ig, page 6g. — ^' Courtship, with its vivid percep- 
tions and quickened emotions, is a great opportunity for 
evolution; and to institute and lengthen reasonably a 
period so rich in impression is one of its latest and high- 
est efforts. To give love time, indeed, has been all 
along, and through a great variety of arrangements, the 
chief means of establishing it on the earth. Unfortu- 
nately, the lesson of nature here is being all too slowly 
learned even among nations with its open book before 
them. In some of the greatest of civilized countries, real 
mutual knowledge between the youth of the sexes is 
unattainable, marriages are made only by a higher kind 
of purchase, and the supreme step in life is taken in the 
dark. . . . The people of America have proved that the 
blending of the sweet currents of different family lives in 
social intercourse, in recreation, and — most original of 
all — in education, can take place freely and joyously 
without any sacrifice of man's reverence for woman, or 
woman's reverence for herself, and, springing out of 
these naturally mingled lives, there must more and more 
come those sacred and happy homes which are the 
surest guarantees for the moral progress of a nation." — 
Henry Drummond, in ^ * The Ascent of Man, ' ' pp. 304, joj. 



^04 Motes, 

Note 20y page 6g — Aristotle suggested that men should 
marry at thirty-seven and women at eighteen, in order 
that their reproductive powers might decline together. 
It is possible that from the purely physiological stand- 
point a strong argument could be made for some such 
difference in the ages of a married couple. But the 
requirements of modern home life and the companion- 
ship of husband and wife necessitate the mating of per- 
sons of nearly the same age. It is generally considered 
desirable that the wife should be somewhat younger than 
the husband, but some of the chief practical reasons for 
this belief would be effectually removed by the rule of 
continence in marriage. Of course, the older people are 
when they marry, the less important in general is a 
difference of a few years in their ages. — See Aristotle's 
''Politics,'' VII, i6, § p. 

Note 21 y page yo, — ** Marriage is not a mysterious, won- 
der-working institute of the Almighty, which can not be 
studied by the common mind, but a simple necessity laid 
in man's social nature, which may be read and under- 
stood by everyone who will investigate that nature. . . . 
It should not be entered in blindness, but rather in the day- 
light of a perfect knowledge of its rules and regulations, 
its provisions and conditions, its laws and privileges, so 
that no uncertainty shall attend its realization, no un- 
happy revealments shall follow a knowledge of its reality. 
... Its relations involve some of the most stem duties 
and acts of self-denial that men are called upon to per- 
form. '^ — G, S. Weaver, in ''Hopes and Helps for the 
Young,'' p, 2JI, 

Note 22, page 71, — In Charles Kingsley's ** Westward 
Ho ! '* there is a beautiful tale about the founding of the 
" Brotherhood of the Rose." Frank I^eigh, at a meeting 
of Rose Salterne*s rival lovers, says, p. 180, ** Why should 



NOTES. 205 

we not make this common love to her whom I am unwor- 
thy to name, the sacrament of a common love to each 
other ? Why should we not follow the heroical examples 
of those ancient knights, who, having but one grief, one 
desire, one goddess, held that one heart was enough to 
contain that grief, to nourish that desire, to worship that 
divinity; and so uniting themselves in friendship until 
they became but one soul in two bodies, lived only for 
each other in living only for her, vowing as faithful wor- 
shipers to abide by her decision, to find their own bliss 
in hers, and whomsoever she esteemed most worthy of 
their love, to esteem most worthy also ? ' * 

In George Kbers's ^'Uarda " there is another pleasing 
episode in the first love scene between the heroine and 
Prince Rameri. Uarda says : — 

** * When I was strong, I often had to go late in the even- 
ing to fetch water from the landing-place where the great 
water-wheel stands. Thousands of drops fall from the 
great earthenware pails as it turns, and in each you can 
see the reflection of a moon, yet there is only one in the 
sky. Then I thought to myself, so it must be with the 
love in our hearts. We have but one heart, and yet we 
pour it out into other hearts without its losing in strength 
or in warmth. I thought of my grandmother, of my 
father, of little Scheran, of the gods, and of Pentaur. 
Now I should like to give you a part of it too.* 

** ' Only a part? ' asked Rameri. 

'* * Well, the whole will be reflected in you, you know,' 
said Uarda, * as the whole moon is reflected in each drop.* 

'* * It shall ! ' cried the prince, clasping the trembling 
girl in his arms, and the two young souls were united in 
their first kiss.** — Pp, 362 y j6j. 

Note 2s, page 75. — It is not always easy, especially for 
a young person, to find out what are **pure and scientific 



2o6 NOTES. 

sources " of information regarding sex and its functions. 
I know of no better literature for the young on this sub- 
ject than the excellent booklets by Dr. Mary Wood-Allen, 
of Ann Arbor, Mich., entitled ** Almost a Man" and 
^* Almost a Woman.'* For more extended treatises, the 
books in the ^ ' Self and Sex Series ' ' by Dr. Wood- Allen 
and Dr. Sylvanus Stall are to be recommended. For na- 
ture studies in reproduction, Miss Margaret Warner Mor- 
ley's ** A Song of I^ife " and '* L<ife and Love,'* are excel- 
lent and beautiful books. There are, of course, numberless 
** doctor books" containing more or less trustworthy in- 
formation, but their tendency is to treat too much of 
pathological conditions, and all too often they are simply 
advertising media for men who wish to make money off 
the ignorance and misfortunes of the people. For ma- 
ture students Dr. H. Newell Martin's ** Human Body," 
eighth edition, contains an excellent chapter on ** Repro- 
duction." Perhaps as simple a test as can be applied to 
literature on the subject of sexual functions by the indi- 
vidual reader is this: if the author works upon the fears 
of his readers, or devotes most of his space to a discussion 
of sexual ailments, the book should be laid aside; on the 
other hand, if he presents an ethical ideal, and treats of 
\he functions of sex from the standpoint of physiology 
and biology, the book should receive further considera- 
tion. It is not to be expected, however, that a person 
can get an adequate knowledge of sex simply by reading. 
Men and women have different sex problems to solve, 
and naturally do not take exactly the same point of view. 
For this reason it seems altogether necessary that, before 
marriage, a young man and a young woman should 
discuss sex problems and compare their experiences. 
Discussion without knowledge would be fruitless. Knowl- 
edge without discussion would furnish no safeguard 
against mutual misunderstanding. 



NOTES. 207 

Note 24, page 82, — There is no reason for being arbi- 
trary in fixing the number of children suitable for a 
family. In general, parents who are better fitted for 
reproduction, and have more ample means for educating 
their children, should have a larger number; while those 
who are less fit, and have more limited resources, should 
have fewer. It is not likely that a woman will be able to 
mother more than half a dozen children without putting 
too great limitations upon her own life for the good of 
the home. On the other hand, a single child in a family 
does not even provide for a stationary population, and is 
likely to be spoiled by being made the too exclusive 
object of parental solicitude without having a chance to 
learn responsibility in association with brothers and 
sisters. 

Note 2j;yPage8j, — ** The apparent object of the passion 
between the sexes is the continuation of the species, and 
the formation of such an intimate union of views and 
interests between two persons as will best promote their 
happiness, and at the same time secure the proper degree 
of attention to the helplessness of infancy and the educa- 
tion of the rising generation; but if every man were to 
obey at all times the impulses of nature in the gratifica- 
tion of this passion without regard to consequences, the 
principal part of these important objects would not be 
attained, and even the continuation of the species might 
be defeated by a promiscuous intercourse." — Malthus^ 
loc, cit.^pp. 441 y 442. 

**The obvious design of sexual desire is the repro- 
duction of the species. . . . The pleasure attached to 
this function is simply to insure reproduction, and 
nothing more. The gratification of this passion, or 
indeed of any other, l)eyond its legitimate end, is an 
undoubted violation of natural law, as may be determined 



2o8 NOTES, 

by the light of nature, and by resulting moral and physical 
evils/' — /. R, Black, M, D., i?i '* The Laws of Health,'' 

P^ 232* 

** The Bible furnishes no foundation for the conclusion 
that sensual gratification is an aim of marriage. It is 
remarkable that as yet no attempt has been made to 
apply the fundamental principles of Christianity to the 
regulation of the sexual relation of marriage. Powerful 
as these principles have been in forming and maintaining 
a chaste life among the unmarried, thus far the central 
doctrine of the Christian religion, that the lower nature 
must be made subservient to the higher, has not been 
brought to bear with any degree of force upon men and 
women in the marriage relation. . . . Every child has 
the right to be well-born. It is the duty of parents to 
make the prenatal conditions of their child the most 
favorable to the development of a strong body and mind. 
To allow a physical appetite to overthrow these condi- 
tions is a sin. Furthermore, if this gratification tends to 
dethrone the spiritual element and aim of marriage, it is 
also wrong. . . . Sexual gratification should be inva- 
riably subjected to the great aims of the well-being of 
children and of the development of character.'* — Charles 
F, Thwing, in ** The Family, '^ pp, 100, loi. 

** Whether the married life shall be a celibate life is to 
be determined by that mutual love and respect which are 
presupposed in marriage. Purity is a duty as binding in 
the wedded as in the unwedded state. . . . Reason and 
not passion, a regard for moral character and not a love 
of pleasure, respect for the right of children unborn, 
suggest the principles which should guide the husband 
and the wife in a relation in which injustice and impur- 
ity are as easy as they are common." — Ibid,,p, 145. 

Sexual intercourse for procreation only was, to some 



NOTES. 209 

extent, a practice among early Christians. ** The apolo- 
gists, Justin Martyr about the year 150, Athenagoras 
about 180, and Minucius Felix about 200, all refer to the 
chastity and sobriety which characterized the sect 
(Christians), the celibacy practiced by some members, 
and the single marriage of others, of which the sole 
object was the securing of offspring, and not the gratifica- 
tion of the passions." —Lea^ loc. cit,^ p. jj. 

It is related of Zenobia, the celebrated queen of 
Palmyra, that **she never admitted her husband^s em- 
braces but for the sake of posterity. If her hopes were 
baffled, in the ensuing month she reiterated the experi- 
ment.** — Edward Gibbon, in '^ The History of the De- 
cline and Fall of the Roman Empire, ^^ Vol, I, p. 3S0, 
note. 

Note 26, page 8^. —See Dr. Geo. H. Napheys, in ''The 
Physical Life of Woman,*' pp. 184, et seq. Dr. Martin 
says: **The absence of the menstrual flow is normal dur- 
ing pregnancy and while suckling; and in some rare 
cases it never occurs throughout life, even in healthy 
women capable of bearing children.** — ^^The Human 
Body,'*'' eighth edition, p, 6^g. 

Note 2^, page 86, — There is every reason to believe that 
most married people have no program at first. And the 
best answer to many who object to continence is simply 
to say, ''Very well, then, — what course are you going to 
adopt?** 

Note28ypage88.— Sa,mvLel H. Terry, in "Controlling 
Sex in Generation,*' quoted by F. W. Abbott, M. D., in 
"Limitation of the Family," pp. 21, 22. 

Note 2g, page 8g.— Dr. Wm. Acton, in " The Functions 
and Disorders of the Reproductive Organs,*' p. 122. 

Note 30, page go, — Spencer, in " Principles of Kthics,** 
Vol. I, p. 543. The general discussion referred to in the 
14 



2IO NOTES. 

text will be found on pages 541-543 and 550-553. On 
page 553, Mr. Spencer says, referring to sexual indul- 
gence during pregnancy, and too frequent child-bearing: 
** Here, then, as in sundry preceding cases, evolutionary 
ethics utters an interdict which current ethics from what- 
ever source derived, shows no signs of uttering.** 

Note 31^ page go, — ** Society looks with bitterest con- 
tempt upon a temporary union whose only object is grati- 
fication, and the price of which is money; but, for the 
life of me, I can hardly see any distinction between that 
and the more permanent one where a very much larger 
price is paid.'* — Rev, MinotJ, Savage^ in ** Man^ Woman^ 
and Child,'' p, 66, 

**When the demands of civil law are complied with, 
men and women deem themselves, and are deemed by 
others, to have imposed all the restraint upon their 
carnal natures necessary to fill the ends of right and of 
law. Consequently, when evils, in the form of disease, 
make their appearance in the organs devoted to the gen- 
erative function, these diseases are not perceived to be 
the special result of any form of unlawful behavior, but 
they are usually supposed to be inflictions sent in some 
way by an overruling power and for the spiritual well- 
being of the victim.**—/. R, Black, M. /?., loc. cit.,p. 2^2, 

Note j2, page p/. — There are certain women who seem 
to be especially liable to conceive, no matter at what 
time during the inter-menstrual period the act takes 
place.*'— Z?r. Sydney Barrington Elliot, in ^^ Aedoeol- 

ogy,'' p.170. 

''Sexual congress is most apt to be followed by preg- 
nancy if it occur immediately after«a menstrual period, 
. . . The menstrual process probably is a special prepa- 
ration of the womb for the reception of an embryo and 
it^ nourishment. There is, however, evidence that ov4 



NOTES. ' 211 

are occasionally discharged at other than the regular 
monthly periods of ovulation and may be fertilized and 
cause a pregnancy." — Dr, H. Newell Martin^ loc, cit,y 
p, 662, 

**The Itme when impregnation is most apt to take 
place is probably during the eight or ten days immediately 
following the cessation of the menstrual discharge; and 
some consider the menstrual epoch and the few days pre- 
ceding it a period of susceptibility. Considering the 
three to five days of the flow, the four to seven preceding 
it, and the eight or ten following it the fertile period, we 
have remaining a little more than a week of comparative 
insusceptibility, which has been termed the * agenetic ' 
period; but this rule has so many exceptions that we 
may safely say no period of absolute infertility exists." — 
Dr. F. IV. Abbott, in ^^ Limitation of the Family,'^ p, g. 

Note jj, page g2. — ** Women, who from infancy are 
trained to think of themselves as invalids, are ver)^ apt to 
become such by the time they have passed through the 
feverish excitement attendant upon fashionable marriage, 
and have entered upon their first pregnancy. They have 
heard of longings, and so they begin to cultivate them as 
a part of their regular program. The usual result is to 
fix the mind on something impossible to get, and then 
worry lest the child should be marked by that impossible 
thing.'* — Dr.Sa^ah Hackett Stevenson in '' The Physi- 
ology of Woman y^^ p. g6. 

Note 34, page 93,—^' During the whole period of gesta- 
tion the woman is not merely supplying from her blood 
nutriment for the foetus, but also through her lungs and 
kidneys, getting rid of its wastes; the result is a strain on 
her whole^system which, it is true, she is constructed to 
bear and will carry well if in good health, but which is 
severely felt if she be feeble or suffering from disease. 



212 NOTES, 

The healthy married woman who endeavors to evade 
motherhood because she thinks she will thus preserve 
her personal appearance, or because she dislikes the 
trouble of a family, deserves but little sympathy; she is 
trying to escape a duty voluntarily undertaken, and owed 
to her husband, her country, and her race; but she 
whose strength is undermined, and whose life is made 
one long discomfort for the sexual gratification of her 
husband, deserves every consideration. . . . 

** Apart from pregnancy, moreover, a woman* s health 
is often injured by frequent sexual intercourse. A phy- 
sician who has unusual opportunities of knowing, states 
that he has reason to believe that not only is the act of 
sexual congress at best, from a physical point of view, a 
mere nuisance to the majority of [women belonging to 
the more luxurious classes of society after they attain to 
the age of twenty-two or twenty-three, but that a very 
considerable proportion suffer acute pain from it such as, 
if frequent, breaks down the general health/' — Dr. H, 
Newell Martin^ loc. cit.ypp. 66 j, 664. 

It seems that in practical social ethics some savage 
tribes surpass most civilized men in certain respects. 
Westermarck, in discussing the causes of polygamy, says: 
** There are several reasons why a man may desire to 
possess more than one wife. First, monogamy requires 
from him periodical continence. He has to live apart 
from his wife, not only for a certain time every month, 
but, among many peoples, during her pregnancy also. 
Among the Shawanese, for instance, * as soon as a wife is 
announced to be in a state of pregnancy, the matrimonial 
rights are suspended and continency preserved with a 
religious and mystical scrupulosity.* This suspension of 
matrimonial rights is usually continued till a considerable 
time after child-birth. . . . Very commonly in a state of 



Savage and barbarous life, the husband must not cohabit 
with his wife until the child is weaned." — '* The History 
of Human Marriage, '' p. 483, See, also, for the laws of 
the fews, Leviticus 12, ig, 20; and for the ancient Zoro- 
astrians, see ''The Zend Avesta,''' in ^'Sacred Books of 
the East,'' Vol. /, pp. 172, 173, 185. 

Note 3 s, page ()4. — Speaking of passion as responsible 
for foeticide, Mrs. Isabella Beecher Hooker says: **That, 
as a general rule, women are feebly endowed with this 
passion, and that men are by nature and training (or 
by lack of it, perhaps) overstocked, will not be denied. 
. . . Granting woman greater pleasure in mere sexual 
indulgence than usually comes to her by largest allowance, 
it is safe to say that, in nine cases out of ten, maternity, 
with its early pains, and later cares, greatly lessens her 
power of enjoyment, and for the larger part of her married 
life she is either positively distressed by the apparently 
necessary ^demands of her husband upon her, and irre- 
sponsive to them, or kept to a cheerful response by a 
self-abnegation, and regard for his comfort, not to say 
fear for his moral aberration, which is a positive drain 
upon her health and strength." — " Womanhood, Its 
Sanctities and Fidelities,'' pp. 13, 14, 

Note 36, page 96.— Br. F. W. Abbott, of Taunton, 
Mass., in his pamphlet on the ** lyimitation of the 
Family," already referred to, discusses at considerable 
length the various devices used for the prevention of con- 
ception, and points out how all, or nearly all, of them 
are harmful, or ineffective. In both city and country 
slums many families are too large, and the overcrowding 
of homes and the degradation of women into mere breeders 
of unwelcome offspring are the sources of great evils. Yet 
the teaching of devices to prevent conception as a remedy 
for these evils would probably result in still worse con- 



^14 NOTES, 

ditions. For in proportion as any chosen device was 
likely to fulfill its purpose and was not disagreeable, it 
would remove the most dreaded penalty that nature has 
put upon sexual sensuality. And who would say that 
the highly civilized upper-class society of ancient Rome 
was healthier than are the slums of Ivondon and New 
York ? Sensuality armed with riches and power is more 
dangerous to society than the poverty and wretchedness 
of the *' fourth estate.^' 

Note J7, page gj,—-''h. fancied inability to support 
children, or the inconvenience attending their care, the 
privations of the gay young man, who must go into 
fashionable society, or the fashionable young lady, who 
ivill attend all the parties, fritter and flirt her time away 
for the enjoyment of the hour, bring both parties to a 
deliberate determination not to have children. They 
cast about for expedients, consult some advertising char- 
latan for a sure preventive, or impudently bring their 
loathsome propositions to their physician, trying to in- 
volve others in the nameless crime of destroying uncon- 
ceived offspring. 

* ' Probably all their worse than beastly efforts fail to 
prevent results ordained by nature, and then, with frantic 
persistence, they plan and execute the murder of their 
own child. I^et every father and every mother know 
that life in the embryo constitutes it, in the light of 
science, and the sight of Him who gave it, a human 
being, and to arrest the development of it is no less mur- 
der than if it were born an hour." — W. H, Byford^ 
M. D.y loc. cit,y p, 38, 

The whole subject of the morals of prevention of con- 
ception, and abortion, is treated with ungloved hands by 
Dr. H. S. Pomero3f, in '' The Ethics of Marriage." 

Note 38 y page giy, — ** There is a current impression that 



JStOTES, 215 

a pregnancy, once commenced, can be brought to a pre- 
mature end, especially in its early stages, without any 
serious risk to the woman. That belief is erroneous. 
Premature delivery, early or late in pregnancy, is always 
more dangerous than natural labor at the proper term. . . . 

**Dr. Storer, an eminent gynecologist, states emphat- 
ically, from extended observation, that despite apparent 
and isolated instances to the contrary — 

•* I. A larger proportion of women die during, or in con- 
sequence of, an abortion, than during, or in consequence 
of, child-bed at the full term of pregnancy. 

** 2. A very much larger number of women become con- 
firmed invalids, perhaps for life ; and — 

*' 3. The tendency to serious, and often fatal organic dis- 
ease, as cancer, is rendered very much greater at the so- 
called * turn of life,* by previous artificially induced 
premature delivery ."— Z>r. H. Newell Martin^ loc, cit,, 
pp, 665, 666. 

Note jp, page 9/. — Wordsworth Donisthorpe, in ' ' I^aw 
in a Free State," pp. 180, 190, says: ''In the eyes of 
unprejudiced persons, unaccustomed to existing social 
arrangements, a marriage system would hardly be re- 
garded as immaculate which requires lifelong partner- 
ships to be entered into without 'experience, and, as it 
were, in the dark ; which, in case of disappointment, 
enjoins upon the parties what Godwin denounced as a 
life of unchastity, — the procreation of children in the 
absence of love ; which winks at the out and out sale of 
a girl's person into life-bondage ior hard cash ; which 
unequalizes the male and female children's inheritance, 
on the ground that women are a marketable commodity, 
and may expect to be ' kept ' by their husbands ; which 
enforces the barbaric restitution of conjugal rights ; 
which] sanctions the rape of a married woman ; which 



2i6 mTMS. 

refuses a woman divorce on the ground of her husband's 
adultery ; which offers the youth of the country the 
choice between an irrevocable bond, and prostitution ; 
which calls into being a standing army of public women ; 
and which, in consequence, hands down from generation 
to generation distempers which would die out in a decade 
under a system of orderly freedom.'' These words are 
applied to conditions as they exist in England, but with 
some modifications would apply equally well to mar- 
riage in this country. Mr. Donisthorpe advocates a free- 
dom of marriage alliances of which I do not approve, but 
which is a logical conclusion from the premise that sexual 
intercourse for love, independent of its social function, is 
virtuous. 

Note 40, page gS, — Dr. Sydney Harrington Klliot, in 
** ^doeology. " This book is in many respects excellent. 
It was in reading the following passage during my fifth 
year in college, that I first looked squarely into the face 
of the idea of continence in marriage: — 

*^ We now come to the consideration of the two remain- 
ing methods of controlling procreation — chastity and the 
prevention of conception. Chastity is the ideal proce- 
dure. . . . Most men are born with inordinate sexual 
passion, and few are endowed with the power of control- 
ling it. Therefore we must have some means more prac- 
ticable than chastity without the criminality and danger 
of abortion, and this we find in the prevention of concep- 
tion. It is to be hoped that in future generations, virtue 
and purity will be so innate that the first-mentioned state 
will be generally possible. However, as men are at pres- 
ent constituted, no matter what their condition, they will 
have intercourse, and the natural consequence of inter- 
course is the birth of children. This occurrence in itself 
would be innocent enough were this the end of the 



matter ; but, on the contrary, this is only the beginning, 
for these children must be fed and educated, and must 
finally take on the responsibilities of manhood and 
womanhood whether they are fit for it or not." — Fp. 
148, 149, 

Note 41 y page 106. — The discussion in this paragraph of 
the text follows, in the main, the ideas expressed by 
Lester F. Ward, in ** Dynamic Sociology,'* Vol. I, pp. 
^^1,etseq. 

Note 42^ page 107, — ** After puberty, occasional emis- 
sions of semen, especially while asleep, are natural to the 
healthy male, and require no interference whatever.'* — 
Dr. F, W, Abbott, in ''The Education of Youth upon 
Matters Sexual, ' ' p. 24. 

** Certainly no man is entitled to the character of a 
continent or chaste man who, by any unnatural means, 
causes the expulsion of semen. On the other hand, the 
occasional occurrence of nocturnal emissions or wet 
dreams is quite compatible with, and, indeed, is to be ex- 
pected as a consequence of, continence, whether tempo- 
rary or permanent. It is in this way that nature relieves 
herself." — Dr. Wm. Acton, loc. cit., pp. 47, 48. 

"This period of attaining sexual maturity, known as 
puberty, takes place from the eleventh to the sixteenth 
year. ... As these changes are completed, spontane- 
ous nocturnal seminal emissions take place from time to 
time during sleep, being usually associated with voluptu- 
ous dreams. Many a young man is alarmed by these ; 
he has been kept in ignorance of the whole matter, is too 
bashful to speak of it, and getting some quack advertise- 
ment thrust into his hand in the street, is alarmed to 
learn that his strength is being drained off, and that he is 
on the highroad to idiocy and impotence, imless he place 
himself in the hands of the advertiser. I^ads at this 



-m 



2ig AroTES. 

period of life should have been taught that such emis- 
sions, when not too frequent, and not excited by any 
voluntary act of their own, are natural and healthy.'' — 
Dr. H. Newell Martin, loc, cit., p. 66g, 

Note 43, page 109, — *'A11 experience tends to prove 
that if a man observes strict continence in thought, as 
well as deed, and is gifted with ordinary intelligence, he 
is more likely to distinguish himself in liberal pursuits 
than those who live incontinently, whether in the way of 
fornication or by committing marital excesses." — Dr, 
Wm, Acton, loc. cit,, p, 74. 

The reader is referred to Dr. M. ly. Holbrook*s excel- 
lent little book, on ** Physical, Intellectual, and Moral 
Advantages of Chastity,'' for a full discussion of the sub- 
ject. Chapter II, " Does Chastity Injure the Health?" 
is especially valuable. 

In Swami VivekSnanda's lectures on **Raja Yoga," 
**Yoga Philosophy," p. 180, occurs the following pas- 
sage: " By the establishment of continence energy is 
gained. The chaste brain has tremendous energy, 
gigantic will power ; without that there can be no mental 
strength. All men of gigantic brains are very continent, 
and this is what gave them power. Therefore the Yoga 
must be continent. " 

* * The most successful races, other things being equal, 
are those which multiply the fastest. In the conflicts of 
mankind numbers have ever been a great power. The 
most numerous group has always had an advantage over 
the less numerous, and the fastest breeding group has 
always tended to be the most numerous. In consequence, 
human nature has descended into a comparatively uncon- 
tentious civilization, with a desire far in excess of what is 
needed ; with a * felt want,' as political economists would 
say, altogether greater than the * real want.' A walk in 



NOTES. 219 

tendon is all that is necessary to establish this. * The 
great sin of great cities ' is one vast evil consequent upon 
it. And who is to reckon up how much these words 
mean? How many spoiled lives, how many broken 
hearts, how many wasted bodies, how many ruined 
minds, how much misery pretending to be gay, how 
much gayety feeling itself to be miserable, how much after 
mental pain, how much eating and transmitted disease ! 
And in the moral part of the world, how many minds are 
racked by incessant anxiety, how many thoughtful 
imaginations which might have left something to man- 
kind are debased by mean cares, how much every succes- 
sive generation sacrifices to the next, how little does any 
of them make of itself in comparison with what might 
be ! And how many Irelands have there been in the 
world where men would have been contented and happy 
if they had only been fewer ; how many more Irelands 
would there have been if the intrusive nimibers had not 
been kept down by infanticide, vice, and misery. How 
painful is the conclusion that it is dubious whether all the 
machines and inventions of mankind * have yet lightened 
the day's labor of a human being.' They have enabled 
more people to exist, but these people work just as hard 
and are just as mean and miserable as the elder and the 
fewer." — Walter Bagehot^ in '''Physics and Politics,'''' 

Note 44, page 117. — See Dr. George H. Napheys, lac. 
cit.y p. 122. 

Note 45, page 117. — In his work on ' * The Cell in Devel- 
opment and Inheritance,'' Prof. E. B. Wilson states that 
where several spermatozoa enter the ovum, or egg-cell, 
the latter breaks up and disintegrates. He further states, 
page 148, that ** immatture eggs, before the formation of 
the polar bodies, have no power to form a vitelline mem- 



^^5 mms. 

brane, and the spermatozoa always enter them in coh^ 
siderable numbers." These facts, although not gleaned 
frorn human reproduction in particular, would suggest a 
possible cause for sterility in a woman who participates 
frequently in sexual intercourse. 

Note 46, page 118. — Dr. Wm. Acton, loc. cit.^ p. 118. 

Note 47, page I2j.— '* He who has an ideal of action and 
principles of conduct is distinguished from him who has 
none by the position he accords in his life to the different 
needs of his being, and by the clairvoyance and the firm- 
ness with which he knows how to subordinate some to 
others. This is why I lay down the principle that the 
prime necessity in love is to have an ideal, because this 
ideal helps us to govern ourselves. For him who appre- 
ciates his Mfe, his dignity, and that of others, to yield to 
his passions is, under certain conditions, to betray what 
is most noble in him to gratify a simple desire. Conse- 
quently, while recognizing that this desire is a legitimate 
one in itself, he prefers to sacrifice it ; and thus the first 
homage he renders to his nature and to himself is that 
of chastity." — Charles Wagner y in ^'Youtky^^ p. 248, 

** We are often told that the most thorough perception 
of the dependence of wages upon population will not 
influence the conduct of a laboring man, because it is not 
the children he himself can have that will produce any 
effect in generally depressing the labor market. True: 
and it is also true that one soldier's running away will not 
lose the battle; accordingly it is not that consideration 
which keeps each soldier in his rank: it is the disgrace 
which naturally and inevitably attends our conduct by 
any one individual, which if pursued by a majority, every- 
body can see would be fatal. Men are seldom found to 
brave the general opinion of their class, unless supported 



NOTES. 221 

either by some principle higher than regard for opinion, 
or by some strong body of opinion elsewhere. 

*' It must be borne in mind also, that the opinion here 
in question, as soon as it attained any prevalence, would 
have powerful auxiliaries in the great majority of women. 
It is never by the choice of the wife that families are too 
numerous; on her devolves (along with all the physical 
suffering and at least a full share of the privations) the 
whole of the intolerable domestic drudgery resulting 
from the excess. To be relieved from it would be hailed 
as a blessing by multitudes of women who now never 
venture to urge such a claim, but who would urge it, if 
supported by the moral feelings of the community. 
Among the barbarisms which law and morals have not 
yet ceased to sanction, the most disgusting surely is, that 
any human being should be permitted to consider himself 
as having a right to the person of another. ' ' — John 
Stuart Milly loc. cit.^ Book II, chapter /j, section 2, 

Note 48, page 128. — ' * We believe that the greatest num- 
ber of examples of the most impassioned, absorbing, and 
lasting affection between the sexes have occurred within 
the ties of marriage, and not outside those ties. More 
than other kindred relations, these rest on the nourishing 
basis of public law and social honor, as well as of personal 
esteem and avowed identification of interests. Whatever 
necessitates secrecy, or compromises the fullness and 
frankness of self-respect, even if it give piquancy and 
fire, takes away moral health, steady integrity; and inserts 
an insidious element, either of devouring fever or of slow 
decay. Other things being equal, affection, wedded 
under every legal and moral sanction, reaches the highest 
climax, and is the most complete and enduring. Every 
failure implies some defect in the conditions." — W. R, 
Alger y loc, cit.y p, 106, 



^•■■^ 



222 NOTES, 

Note 4g, page ij6. — 

** A king must first subdue himself, and then 
Vanquish his enemies. How can a prince 
Who can not rule himself enthrall his foes ? 
To 'curb the senses is to conquer self.'* 
— ^^ Mahabahrattay'^ XII, -?5pp, in '^Indian Wis- 
dom , ' ' by Sir Monier Monier- Williams^ p, 448. 

** Youth's glories are as transient as the shadow 
Of an autumnal cloud ; and sensual joys, 
Though pleasant at the moment, end in pain.'* 



** The enemies which rise within the body, 
Hard to overcome — thy evil passions — 
Should manfully be fought ; who conquers these 
Is equal to the conqueror of worlds." 



* * Who trusts the passions finds them base deceivers : 
Acting like friends, they are his bitterest foes ; 
Causing delight, they do him great unkindness ; 
Hard to be shaken off, they yet desert him. " 
— '' Kirdtarjumya,''^ of Bhdraviy XI ; /j, 32,35; 
ibid,, pp. 463, 464. 

** What boots it to have wealth that is not given, 
Nor yet enjoyed ? What profits strength to one 
Who ne'er assails his foes ? Where is the use 
Of sacred knowledge, if it does not lead 
To practice of religion ? What avails 
A soul to him whose senses are not conquered ? " 
— '' HitopadesUy^' Book /, 1^0; ibid,, p. 540, 



NOTES. 223 

Note 50, page 136,— 

** I knew a common farmer, the father of five sons, 
And in them the fathers of sons, and in them the fathers 

of sons. 
This man was of wonderful vigor, calmness, beauty of 

person, 
The shape of his head, the pale yellow and white of his 

hair and beard, the immeasurable meaning of his 

black eyes, the richness and breadth of his manner. 
These I used to go and visit him to see, he was wise also. 
He was six feet tall, he was over eighty years old, his 

sons were massive, clean, bearded, tan-faced, hand- 
some. 
They and his daughters loved him, all who saw him 

loved him. 
They did not love him by allowance, they loved him with 

personal love. 
He drank water only, the blood showed like scarlet 

through the clear-brown skin of his face. 
He was a frequent gunner and fisher, he sailed his boat 

himself, he had a fine one presented to him by a 

ship-joiner, he had fowling-pieces presented to him 

by men that loved him. 
When he went with his five sons, and many grandsons 

to hunt or fish, you would pick him out as the most 

beautiful and vigorous of the gang, 
You would wish long and long to be with him, you would 

wish to sit by him in the boat that you and he might 

touch each other." — Walt Whitman y in '■^ Leaves of 

Grass,'' pp, 82, 83. 

Note 51, page 138. — In Plato's *•' Republic," Socrates, 

referring to the suggestion that women should take part 

in gymnastic exercises and warfare naked the same as 

jnen, says: *'But when experience showed that to let 



224 NOTES. 

all things be uncovered was far better than to cover 
them up, and the ludicrous effect to the outward eye 
vanished before the better principle which reason asserted, 
then the man was perceived to be a fool who directs the 
shafts of his ridicule at any other sight but that of folly 
and vice, or seriously inclines to weigh the beautiful by 
any other standard than that of the good." — P, i/f4^ 
JoweWs Translation, 

Note 52, page 140. — '* An early result, partly of her sex, 
and partly of her passive strain, is the founding through 
the instrumentality of the first savage Mother, of a new 
and beautiful social state — Domesticity. While Man, 
restless, eager, hungry, is a Wanderer on the earth. 
Woman makes a Home. And though this Home 
be but a platform of sticks and leaves, such as the 
gorilla builds on a tree, it becomes the first great school- 
room of the human race. For one day there appears in 
this roofless room that which is to teach the teachers of 
the world — a little child. " — Henry Drummond^ loc, cit,y 
pp. 280y 281. 

^ote S3^ p(^g^ 141 ' — Olive Schreiner, in ** Dreams,*' 
^^Ivife's Gifts.'* 

Note S4y pc^ge 144, — *' I remember, only the other day, 
a good man looking with me upon a multitude of chil- 
dren who were gathered before us in one of the most 
miserable regions of I/ondon, — children eaten up with dis- 
ease, half -sized, half-fed, half-clothed, neglected by their 
parents, without health, without home, without hope, — 
said to me : ' The one thing really needful is to teach 
these little ones to succor one another, if only with a cup 
of cold water ; but now, from one end of the country to 
the other, one hears nothing but the cry for knowledge, 
knowledge, knowledge!' And yet, surely, so long as 
these children are there in these festering masses, with- 



NOTES. 225 

out health, without home, without hope, and so long as 
their multitude is perpetually swelling, charged with 
misery, they must still be for themselves, charged with 
misery, they must still be for us, whether they help one 
another with a cup of cold water or no ; and the knowl- 
edge how to prevent their accumulating is necessary, 
even to give their moral life and growth a fair chance! 

*'May we not, therefore, say that neither the true 
Hebraism of this good man, willing to spend and be 
spent for these sunken multitudes, nor what I may call 
the spurious Hebraism of our free-trading liberal friends, 
— mechanically worshiping their fetish of the produc- 
tion of wealth, and of the increase of manufacturers and 
population, and looking neither to the right nor left so 
long as this increase goes on, — avails us much here ; and 
that here, again, what we want is Hellenism, the letting 
our consciousness play freely and simply upon the facts 
before us, and listening to what it tells us of the intel- 
ligible law of things as concerns them ? And surely what 
it tells us is, that a man's children are not really sent, any 
more than the pictures upon his wall, or the horses in 
his stable, are sent; and that to bring people into the 
world, when one can not afford to keep them and one's 
self decently and not too precariously, or to bring more 
of them into the world than one can afford to keep thus» 
is, whatever the Times and Mr. Robert Buchanan may 
say, by no means an accomplishment of the divine wilU 
or a fulfillment of Nature's simplest laws, but is just as 
wrong, just as contrary to reason and the will of God, 
as for a man to have horses, or carriages, or pictures, when 
he can not afford them, or to have more of them than he 
can afford ; and that, in the one case as in the other, the 
larger scale on which the violation of reason's law is 
practiced, and the longer it is persisted in, the greater 
15 



226 NOTES. 

must be the confusion and final trouble. Surely no lau- 
dations of free trade, no meetings of bishops and clergy 
in the Bast Bnd of I/ondon, no reading of papers and 
reports, can tell us anything about our social condition 
which it more concerns us to know than that ! and not 
only to know, but habitually to have the knowledge 
present, and to act upon it as one acts upon the knowl- 
edge that water wets and fire burns ! And not only the 
sunken populace of our great cities are concerned to 
know it, and the pauper twentieth of our population ; 
we Philistines of the middle class, too, are concerned to 
know it, and all who have to set themselves to make 
progress in perfection. 

'* But we all know it already ! someone will say ; it is 
the simplest law of prudence. But how little reality 
must there be in our knowledge of it ; how little can we 
be putting it in practice ; how little is it likely to pene- 
trate among the poor and struggling masses of our 
population, and to better our condition, so long as an 
unintelligent Hebraism of one sort keeps repeating as an 
absolute eternal word of God the psalm-verse which says 
that a man who has a great many children is happy ; or 
an unintelligent Hebraism of another sort — that is to say, 
a blind following of certain stock notions as infallible 
— keeps assigning as an absolute proof of national pros- 
perity the multiplying of manufactures and population ! 
Surely, the one set of Hebraisers have to learn that their 
psalm-verse was composed at the resettlement of Jeru- 
salem after the captivity, when the Jews of Jerusalem 
were a handful, an undermanned garrison, and every 
child was a blessing ; and that the word of God, or the 
voice of the divine order of things, declares the posses- 
sion of a great many children to be a blessing only when 
it really is so ! And the other set of Hebraisers, have 



NOTES. 227 

they not to learn that if they call their private acquaint- 
ances imprudent or unlucky, when, with no means of 
support for them, or with precarious means, they have 
a large family of children, then they ought not to call 
the state well-managed and prosperous merely because 
its manufactures and its citizens multiply, if the manu- 
factures, w^hich bring new citizens into existence just 
as much as if they had actually begotten them, bring 
more of them into existence than they can maintain, 
or are too precarious to go on maintaining those whom 
for a while they maintained?" — Matthew Arnold, in 
" Culture aiid Anarchy,"' pp. 188-191. 

Note 55 y page 145. — See Prof. John Fiske's " The Des- 
tiny of Man," and Henry Drummond, loc. cit., p. 
281, et. seq. ^ 

Note 56, page 148. — See Dr. Mary Wood-Allen's 
''Teaching Truth." 

"Human life is neglected at its beginning. . . . We 
are better informed as to how to raise young domestic 
animals than to care for children. . , . The instruction 
that is neglected by parents and teachers is always sup- 
plied from outside sources. It is impossible that chil- 
dren's curiosity should not some day or other be satisfied. 
. . . Confidence in parents and teachers is rudely shaken. 
For their ascendency is substituted that of a teacher 
without authority." — Charles Wagner, loc, cit., pp. 
244. 245. 

" O, how many who ought to be pure and in them- 
selves innocent and loving, are rendered sickly, peevish, 
selfish, and insane, as a consequence of the vicious prac- 
tices of their parents, and are, as a consequence, in turn 
the source of the greatest unhappiness to all around 
them, is known only to physicians." — Dr. W. H. By- 
ford, loc. cit., p. J/. 



228 NOTES. 

' * Till six years of age, definite sexual information may, 
as a rule, profitably be withheld, and chief attention paid 
the avoidance of sexual error ; for it were folly to bur- 
den tender minds with ideas that could only mystify, and 
the preservation of innocence will appreciably lessen 
the need of subsequent instruction.*' — Dr. F. IV. Abbott, 
in ** The Education of Youth upon Matters Sexual,^ ^ 

p. 22. 

** Children of eight, especially boys, should be warned 
against masturbation, and shown its grosser evils ; for if, 
as most physicians can testify, old enough to intention- 
ally contract the habit, they are old enough to be prop- 
erly instructed concerning it. Most boys, according to 
many we have questioned, commence this practice about 
ten ; and a little anticipatory instruction would, no 
doubt, often prove the ounce of prevention." — Ibid., 

Note 57, page 151. — Mr. I^ecky, loc. cit., Vol. I, p. 
108, quotes the following Chinese legend : "When there 
were but one man and one woman upon earth, the woman 
refused to sacrifice her virginity even with a view to peo- 
pling the globe, and the gods, honoring her purity, 
granted that she should conceive beneath the gaze of her 
lover's eyes, and a virgin mother became the parent of 
humanity. ' ' 

Buddha, the great Hindu teacher, whose life and 
teachings rival in purity those of Jesus himself, was 
believed by his followers to have had virgin motherhood. 

The immaculate conception of Jesus is an accepted 
doctrine of orthodox Christianity. 

These examples show that the world believes in the 
purity of virginity and also of motherhood, but shrinks 
from the intercourse of the sexes as impure. With con- 
tinence in marriage, the intercourse of the sexes becomes 



NOTES. 229 

as pui'*; as virginity or motherhood, and is the fit instru- 
ment foi the creation of divine men. 

Note sS, page 152. — ''Because friendship is love with 
the element of selfishness eliminated, because it is love 
apart from any relation which involves possession or 
craving for possession, for that very reason friendship 
has found some of its choicest, its most refined, and its 
most unmistakable illustrations between two persons 
of opposite sex. And just here the truth in its purity 
has had most difficulty of securing acceptance, in conse- 
quence of the weakness, and folly, and wickedness, of 
the world. Yet everywhere and always at this point, the 
truth has had its recognition and its inspiring power in 
the hearts of the noblest and most nobly aspiring of the 
children of men." — H. Clay Trumbull^ loc. cit.,p. loj. 

Note 59 y page 1^7' — Ralph Waldo Emerson, in "Es- 
says," first series, *' Friendship." 

Note 60, page 165. — Dr. Nathan Oppenheim, in ''The 
Development of the Child," p. 8. 

" It is also a matter of serious doubt whether punish- 
ment should be inflicted of the slightest character, 
because the child has not obeyed the command of father 
or mother. He should be taught that the wrong nature 
of the act is the cause of the punishment, and not that it 
is administered for the purpose of maintaining parental 
supremacy. ' '— Dr. IV. H. By ford, loc, cit. , p. 114. 

' * Bear constantly in mind that the aim of your disci- 
pline should be to produce a self-governing being, not 
to produce a being to be governed by others. Were your 
children fated to pass their lives as slaves, you could not 
too much accustom them to slavery during their child- 
hood ; but as they are by and by to be free men, with no 
one to control their daily conduct, you can not too much 
accustom them to self-control while they are under your 



230 NOTES, 

eye." — Herbert Spencer, in ''Education; Intellectual y 
Moral, and Physical,'' published in the Humboldt Li- 
brary, April, 1880, p. joj. 

Note 61, page i6g. — See Dr. Albert Shaw's article on 
" The School City " in the American Monthly Review of 
Reviews for December, 1899. This article is descriptive 
of a movement inaugurated by Mr. Wilson L. Gill, Presi- 
dent of the Patriotic League, an organization whose pur- 
pose is to promote the teaching of civics in the public 
schools of the United States. The ' ' school city ' ' is the 
organization of the pupils in any particular school upon 
the model of the municipal government of the city or 
town in which they live. The purposes of the ** school 
city" are two, nantely, to make every body of public 
school pupils self-governing in their school, and to pre- 
pare them by practical means for an active participation 
in the duties of adult citizenship when they are grown 
up. 

Note 62, page lyi. — ** Two men should be wiser than 
one, and two thousand than two ; nor do I know another 
so gross fallacy in the records 6f human stupidity as that 
excuse for neglect of crime by greatness of cities. As if 
the first purpose of congregation were not to devise laws 
and repress crimes ! As if bees and wasps could live 
honestly in flocks — men, only in separate dens ! As if it 
were easy to help one another on the opposite sides of a 
mountain, and impossible on the opposite sides of a 
street!" — Joh?i Ruskin, in '* The Queen of the Air,'' § 121. 

Note 6s, page 176, — Walt Whitman in "Leaves of 
Grass," pp. 152, 153, ''Song of the Broad-axe," 

Note 64, page /^/.— Rudyard Kipling, "The White 
Man's Burden," in McClure's Magazine, February, 1899. 

Note 65, page 182.—], K. Bluntschli, in "The Theory 
of the State," p. 31. 



NOTES, 231 

Note 66, page 184, — J. S. Mackenzie, in **An Intro- 
duction to Social Philosophy," pp. 376, 377. 

In a note on page 377, Mr. Mackenzie further remarks: 
'' We may say, at any rate, that the inspiration required 
for the spread of the social religion of the future (with- 
out which it seems clear that there can be no true regen- 
eration of society), must be expected to come, not from 
any mere philosophical theory, but from a living person- 
ality. Such personalities have not been entirely wanting 
in recent times. We have had, for instance, the late 
T. H. Green, Arnold Toynbee, and several others ; and 
the influence which such men have exerted has been 
a quite incalculable force. In comparison with such 
powers as these, any theory, however excellent, is only 
the finite beside the infinite. At the basis of such per- 
sonalities, however, there is nearly always, if not a philo- 
sophic theory, at least a philosophic faith. Their lives, 
indeed, might almost be said to be philosophy in the 
concrete ; they embody the ideals which philosophic 
theory seeks to analyze. ' ' 



LIST OF AUTHORS REFERRED 
TO OR QUOTED. 

Refbrkncks to the Text Are by Pages, 
and to the notes by numbers- 

F. W. Abbott, M. D., "The Education of Youth upon 
Matters Sexual," notes 42, 56. ''The lyimitation 
of the Family," p. 88, notes 28, 32, 36. 

Wm. Acton, M. D., ** The Functions and Disorders of the 
Reproductive System," p. 88, notes 29, 42, 43, 46. 

W. R. Alger, '' The Friendships of Women," notes i8;48. 

Sheldon Amos, '*The Science of Politics," note 2. 

Aristotle, ''Politics," note 20. 

Matthew Arnold, " Culture and Anarchy," note 54. 

W. O. Atwater, "The Food Supply of the Future," in 
Century Magazine^ note 9. 

Francis Bacon, "Essays," notQ 12. 

Walter Bagehot, " Physics and Politics," note 43. 

Bible, I^eviticus, note 34 ; Gospel of John, p. 131. 

J. R. Black, M. D., "The I^aws of Health," notes 25, 31. 

J. K. Bluntschli, "The Theory of the State," p. 182, 
note 65. 

W. H. Byford, M. D., "The Philosophy of Domestic 
Ivife," notes 10, 37, 56. 

Edward Caird, "The Critical Philosophy of Immanuel 
Kant," note 4. 

Charles Darwin, " Descent of Man and Selection in Rela- 
tion to Sex," notes 8, 12, 15. 
232 



LIST OF AUTHORS REFERRED TO. 233 

Wordsworth Donisthorpe, ''Law in a Free State," 

note 39. 
Henry Drummond, '*The Ascent of Man/' p. 79, notes 

19. 52, 55. 
George Bbers, "Uarda," note 22. 

Sydney Harrington Elliot, " .^doeology," p. 98, notes 

32, 40. 
Ralph Waldo Emerson, '* Essays," pp. 60, 157, notes 

17, 59- 
Prof. John Piske, "The Destiny of Man," note 55. 
B. Franklin, D. D., ** Marriage and Divorce," note 4. 
Francis Galton, ** Hereditary Genius," p. 27, note 7. 
Edward Gibbon, "The History of the Decline and Fall 

of the Roman Empire," note 25. 
Franklin H. Giddings, ** Principles of Sociology," p. 55, 

note 16. 
W. R. Greg, " Enigmas of Life," note 8. 
George Grote, ** History of Greece," note 13. 
M. L. Holbrook, M. D., ** Physical, Intellectual, and 

Moral Advantages of Chastity," note 43. 
Isabella Beecher Hooker, ''Womanhood, Its Sanctities 

and Fidelities," note 35. 
Rudyard Kipling, ''The White Man's Burden," in Mc- 

dure' 5 Magazine, p. 181, note 64. 
Charles Kingsley, ** Westward Ho ! " note 22. 
Henry C. Lea, ** An Historical Sketch of Sacerdotal Celib- 
acy in the Christian Church," notes i, 25. 
W. E. H. Lecky, ** History of European Morals," notes 

I, 3, 13, 57. 

James Russell Lowell, ** Poems," p. 47. 

J. S. Mackenzie, " An Introduction to Social Philoso- 
phy," p. 183, note 66. 

Rev. T. R. Malthus, "An Essay on the Principle of 
Population," p. 25, notes 6, 10. 



234 ^^^^ OF AUTHORS REFERRED TO, 

Manu, "Laws," note lo. 

John Stuart Mill, '' Principles of Political Economy,'* 

notes 6, 47. 
Martensen, " Christian Ethics," note 18. 
H. Newell Martin, M. D., "The Human Body," notes 

23, 26, 32, 34, 38, 42. 
Sir Monier Monier-Williams, " Indian Wisdom," note 49. 
Margaret Warner Morley, " A Song of Wte," note 23, 

'' Life and Love," note 23. 
Geo. H, Napheys, M. D., "The Physical Life of 

Woman," notes 26, 44. 
Ohio General Assembly, 1898, note 14. 
Nathan Oppenheim, M. D., "The Development of the 

Child," p. 165, note 60. 
Plato, " The Republic," p. 13, notes 13, 51. 
H. S. Pomeroy, M. D., "Ethics of Marriage," note 37. 
John Ruskin, " The Queen of the Air," p. 159 , note 62. G 
Sacred Books of the East, " Laws of Manu," note 10; 

" The Zend Avesta," note 34. 
Rev. Minot J. Savage, " Man, Woman, ai:d Child," 

note 31. 
Olive Schreiner, " Dreams," p. 141, note 53. 
Albert Shaw, " The School City," in American Monthly 

Review of Reviews y note 61. 
Herbert Spencer, " Principles of Ethics," p. 89, notes 6, 

30. " Education; Intellectual, Moral, and Physical," 

note 60. 
Sylvanus Stall, D. D., " Self and Sex Series," note 23. 
Sarah Hackett Stevenson, M. D., "The Physiology of 

Woman," note 33. 
Samuel H. Terry, *' Controlling Sex in Generation," p. 

88, note 28. 
Henry D. Thoreau, ** Familiar Letters," p. 35, note ir. 
Rev. Charles F. Thwing, " The Family," note 25, 



yi->- 



LIST OF AUTHORS REFERRED TO. 235 

H. Clay Trumball, ** Friendship, the Master Passion,'* 
notes 18, 58. 

Sw^mi Vivekananda, '* Raja Yoga," note 43. 

Charles Wagner, " Youth," notes 47, 56. 

Lester F. Ward, " Dynamic Sociology," notes 10, 41. 

G. S. Weaver, ''Hopes and Helps for the Young.'* 
note 21. 

Edward Westermarck, "The History of Human Mar- 
riage," notes 10, 32. 

Walt Whitman, " Leaves of Grass," p. 175, notes 50, 63. 

Prof. E. B. Wilson, " The Cell in Development and 
Inheritance," note 45. 

Mary Wood- Allen, M. D., "Almost a Man," note 23; 
"Almost a Woman," note 23; "Teaching Truth," 
note 56 ; " Self and Sex Series,'* note 23. 

" Zend Avesta," note 34. 



■ ■••'V 



? vV 'J -J 



